Geingob defends decision to pardon city bosses

PRESIDENT Hage Geingob says he did not interfere with the work of the City of Windhoek when he told Windhoek municipal councillors this week to reinstate and pardon two top officials implicated in alleged irregularities.

Geingob said this during an interview with the Namibian Broadcasting Corporation today.

He said claims that he interfered with the municipality were “completely false”.

“I didn’t interfere with the judiciary,” he added. “If the cases are ongoing in the courts, they must go on. If the charges have been laid in the courts, they must go on,” he said.

Windhoek City Police chief Abraham Kanime was suspended in March last year on allegations of misusing public funds, while the city’s chief executive officer, Robert Kahimise, was initially suspended in October last year over a N$170 000 study loan he allegedly took without proper approval from the city council’s management committee.

Geingob admitted it would be wrong for him to stop the process involving the two if their cases were in the courts.

“If these people were taken to the courts […] then I will be wrong. The city is burning. I therefore said, stop the suspensions. It’s just going on like it’s a joke,” he said.

Kanime did not take his suspension case to court, but Kahimise has turned to the Windhoek High Court to challenge the city’s decision to suspend him.

Geingob said it was within his powers, though, to tell regional governors what to do because he appointed them.

“I was talking, as Swapo maybe, but also as president who appointed the governor [who] is there to execute,” he said.

Political commentator Henning Melber told on Wednesday that the president’s order to lift the implicated officials’ suspensions was wrong.

“I think it is highly problematic that the president interferes in matters outside of his immediate discretion. Municipal matters are under that authority, and should remain the affairs of the city councillors as elected representatives of the residents,” Melber said.

“It is, strictly speaking, none of the business for the state president, who should take care of national matters under his office as specified in the Constitution,” Melber commented.

He added that if the president was allowed to continue issuing orders outside his mandate, it would be tampering with the rule of law and disrespecting the division of state powers in terms of the Constitution.