A Senior Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) investigator, whose appointment as the commission’s chief of investigations and prosecutions was blocked by prime minister Saara Kuugongelwa-Amadhila, should be allowed to take up the post he was appointed to, a judge ordered in the Windhoek High Court on Friday.
Judge Eileen Rakow ordered that a judgement she delivered in April last year – in which she set aside the prime minister’s decision to cancel the appointment of ACC investigator Phelem Masule – should be executed while an appeal against that judgement is pending.
Kuugongelwa-Amadhila set aside a decision of the Public Service Commission (PSC) to appoint Masule as the ACC’s chief of investigations and prosecutions at the end of July 2020, after her office received a complaint about alleged irregularities in the recruitment process.
Masule thereafter challenged the prime minister’s decision in the High Court.
In the judgement she delivered in April last year, Rakow found that in terms of the Public Service Act only the president may vary or reject a recommendation made by the PSC.
Masule has only one more month to serve as an ACC official, as he is due to retire at the end of March.
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