Landless People’s Movement leader Bernadus Swartbooi’s diagnosis of the petroleum bill was spot on. He rightly said president Netumbo
Nandi-Ndaitwah is correct to keep a close eye on an oil and gas sector rocked by corruption scandals.
However, there is a danger in moving all executive powers to State House.
It runs the risk of undermining democratic systems, processes and institutions.
In his PhD thesis, ‘State Formation in Namibia: Promoting Democracy and Good Governance’ in 2004, Hage Geingob said presidentialism implied the systematic concentration of political power in the hands of an individual who resists delegating all but the most trivial of decision-making tasks.
Geingob quoted former Malawian dictator Kamuzu Banda, who said in 1972: “Nothing is not my business in this country: Everything is my business, everything. The state of education, the state of our economy, the state of our agriculture, the state of our transport, everything is my business.”
Nandi-Ndaitwah will not want to be remembered for that kind of presidentialism.
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