Africa-Press – Namibia. AFTER a close-fought battle with president Hage Geingob in the 2019 presidential race, Independent Patriots for Change (IPC) leader Panduleni Itula will get a second shot at challenging the position of head of state.
This is after Itula, who stood as an independent presidential candidate in 2019, was elected as the presidential candidate for the IPC in the 2024 national election at the recent National Council of Patriots (NCP) gathering in Windhoek.
Itula contested Sakaria Kandenge from the !Nami≠nus constituency in the //Kharas region.
Unlike other political parties, the president of the IPC is not the automatic candidate for the national presidential election, as the party’s constitution allows any member to be nominated.
Itula received 56 out of the 60 votes that were cast.
He surprised friends and foes alike in 2019 when he scooped 29,37% of the presidential vote, compared to Geingob’s 56,25%.
Minutes after this endorsement last week, Itula appointed Walvis Bay mayor Trevino Forbes as the party’s vice president.
Itula said Forbes was appointed because the party did not elect a vice president during its founding national convention when it was formed in 2020.
He said the party’s constitution provides for transitional arrangements involving that all those who were elected at the convention are considered as having been duly elected national officers.
“What we did at that time was to elect a president, not a vice president. We shall consider that as if we fulfilled all the other things, like 200 voters.
“However, in Article 9.48, the president shall have the right, at his/her discretion, to appoint a vice president(s) who shall serve at the pleasure of the president, subject to endorsement by the annual delegates’ conference and/or the national convention of patriots,” Itula said.
The IPC president also appointed 10 additional members to the NCP at the same event.
They are Elias Ndemuweda, Martha Ndemumana, Jane van Zyl, Fay Kavara Pinto, Niklaas Dawson, Christoph Uirab, Prisca Lilungwe, Petrina Shiindi and Fillemon Shikwambi, as well as Forbes.
Political analyst Olsen Kahiriri, however, questions this move.
“This (IPC) is not a company where you can hire and fire someone because the person who appoints you also have the power to dismiss you. It’s very dangerous. The masses don’t understand what this person is busy doing. They are just following,” he says.
Kahiriri says Itula is close to being a dictator, because of the veto power provided by the party’s constitution.
“He wants to go through a democratic process to be elected, but he himself in his party . . . there is no democratic process. It’s very dangerous,” he says.
Another political analyst, Ndumba Kamwanyah, says: “It has its own benefits, but it also has its own disadvantages, in the sense that it’s just one person who is saying: This is the person I want to be the vice president. I hope that there was a collective process in terms of the leadership itself – that they were involved in the vetting and discussion of who should be the vice president, not just Itula himself.”
He says the public could see it as undemocratic.
“It is not really new, but sometimes, democracy is a guidance exercise. And so what we are seeing with the IPC, it looks like, is more of a guided process to make sure the party represents everybody in the country,” Kamwanyah says.
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