WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.
Original Post Date: 2010-04-05 Time: 19:00:02 Posted By: News Poster
By Paul Shipale
Alfred O T. Hengari wrote that if President Pohamba does not want to be remembered as ‘an anecdote or the accidental president’ without any association with any transformative projects, he must offer ‘a compelling vision for the next five years’ by appointing Cabinet ministers with mandates and objectives, setting targets and timelines based on the challenges of unemployment, the problems in the education sector and housing that the country is faced with, accompanied by a clear laundry list of expectations by the President to his appointed ministers.
Because, according to Hengari, the next five years are defining in the course our country will take, after the last term of President Pohamba which may also signal the retirement of most of our ministers.
I am writing to dissect this latest offering from my confrere the columnist Hengari that appeared in the Friday, March 26 edition of The Namibian newspaper, under the heading ‘President Pohamba must worry about history and his legacy’.
To analyse the political texts and presidential inaugural addresses, network-oriented indicators with sentimental text analysis and visualisations are used to provide an analytical tool to help understand rhetorical substance and style as well as the President’s political and social viewpoint.
Hengari himself, quoting Vivien Schmidt, argues that discourses are important in the formulation and modification of policies.
I would have, however, preferred the academic to pinpoint what his paper attempts to explore within an ex post facto analysis (after the fact design) and the typology of the approach in the problem formulation, which he failed to do as he is so keen to talk about epistemologies and tell us if his writing is exploratory to gain insight in the area of interest; descriptive to examine the meaning through a case study; explanatory to explain why things are the way they are; correlational to see the relationship between variables and to predict future events or prove a theory; evaluative to assess the design, implementation and applicability of a social intervention; interventionist to shed light and provide possible solution; participatory to empower and raise awareness or other typology, if any (Rubin &Babbie,2001,123-126; Neuman, 2000, 477; Bless & Higson-Smith 1995, 41-62; Arkava & Lane, 1983, 11-13; Cook & Campbell, 1979, 95).
On the allegation that Cabinet does not function without ‘any meaningful mandate and objectives, as well as targets with clear timelines including a laundry list of expectations on the part of the president’, this is pure hogwash since I personally enquired and asked to be shown the appointment letters which also contained clear terms of reference as is customary for any civil servant to be issued with such documents.
It is also a fact that the President when addressing the first Cabinet meeting for 2010 stressed that “it is the duty of the executive branch to ensure that all adopted policies are implemented and that the resources allocated are utilised timely and for the purposes intended so that progress continues to be made and momentum can be maintained towards the achievement of our national development plans and vision 2030”.
The Head of State also reminded his Cabinet about the importance of hard work, dedication and proper planning.
President Pohamba is not going to start over with ‘a new compelling vision’ as alleged by Hengari but is to build on the existing successes as he was elected on the basis of the ruling party’s manifesto, which sets out the policy guidelines the President and his Cabinet will implement based on the set target goals of NDP3 and the objectives of Vision 2030.
I wrote last time that the President used the inaugural address to articulate not only his administrative goals and policies, but also his hope for the nation when he vowed to continue combating corruption and to tackle the high rate of unemployment through agriculture ‘with the green scheme, aquaculture, rice production, grape cultivation and other projects for food security and employment creation’.
Another critical sector that the President pledged to address was education, where he deployed Drs Abraham Iyambo and David Namwandi. The Cabinet was infused with new blood with a total of five new ministers and 14 new deputies to ensure ‘continuity with a purpose’ by blending experience and youth.
The appointment of a new DG of the NPC in the person of the former Governor of the Bank of Namibia Tom Alweendo should also be viewed in that context and to coordinate planning and drive developmental goals towards Vision 2030.
“We had an expansionary budget last year which was made possible by the successive years of prudent fiscal policy management.
“Alongside an expansionary budget, the government also extended general tax concessions which maintained investments and the welfare condition of citizens, mitigating the impact of the economic crisis on the economy and standard of living and thanks to a counter-cyclical fiscal strategy of our government, our economy has managed to ride out the economic storm and the prospects over the MTEF are now favourable,” said the Minister of Finance Saara Kuugongelwa-Amadhila who just tabled the appropriation bill for 2010/11 and the MTEF for the financial years 2010/11 to 2012/13 before Parliament for a total of N$28,8 billion.
For this year, the budget interventions are focused on sustaining the economic rebound for greater economic growth, while the expenditure focus for this MTEF will be on addressing welfare needs, maintaining fiscal sustainability, consolidating the basis for long-term sustainable and equitable growth with jobs and sustain the economic recovery.
The expenditure focus on infrastructure and productive sectors will see investment in infrastructure development raised by N$1billion, bringing the total MTEF allocation to N$14.569 billion to expand the infrastructure network, promote economic growth and create the much needed jobs.
A total of N$339 million has been committed over the MTEF for SMEs’ development and broad-based economic empowerment, including land reform through the DBN, AgriBank, and a new SME banking facility.
The social sector continues to receive the largest share of the total allocations amounting to N$31.454 billion over the MTEF period with education receiving two-thirds of this allocation with an additional N$1.25 million, bringing the total MTEF allocation for education close to N$20 billion.
Youth development will receive an additional N$113 million, while health will receive N$ 366 million, thus increasing the total allocation of health to N$8.171 billion over the MTEF.
In addition, N$257 million is proposed to accelerate the provision of proper sanitation infrastructures in rural areas, small towns, villages and informal settlements, bringing the total allocation of this sector to N$2.869 billion with old age grants increased to N$500 per month.
“This expansionary budget is the correct approach to utilise the available fiscal space without eroding economic fundamentals to secure the recovery and build on the achievements as well as enhancing developmental efforts as an appropriate response to persisting poverty, unemployment and a skewed wealth distribution,” said Minister Kuugongwelwa-Amadhila.
The foundation of Rousseau’s conception of the social contract is an agreement among men to constitute a “collective moral person” through which they endow themselves with the constitution or laws designed to regulate both their mutual relations and their relations with other men.
The point of the social contract theory, as Rousseau states, is that legitimate society exists by the agreement of the people, and acts by popular will. The question that follows then is what is the best government?
There are as many good answers as there are possible combinations in the absolute and relative situation of all nations but if it is asked by what sign we may know that a given people is well or ill-governed – that is another matter all together, and the question being one of fact, begs and admits of an answer and everyone wants to answer it in his/her own way.
The above-mentioned figures speak volumes of how well our people are governed and that does not “display disconnect between what is said and what actually happens on the ground” as alleged by Hengari.
Part of making sense of something is the problem of finding an appropriate metaphor. Jaynes (1979) indicated that the most common metaphors used are drawn from words used to characterise mental visual.
Thus we ‘see’ ‘brilliant’ or ‘obscure’ solutions to problems ‘approaching’ them from some ‘viewpoint’ or ‘perspective’ and ‘grapple’ with their difficulties or ‘comprehend’ parts of the problem.
Hengari’s supposed perspective of ‘the President’s timidity in approaching the presidential functions’ should be seen in that light.
Viewed critically in retrospect, Hengari’s syllogism of ‘discourses having ideational dimensions with cognitive and normative functions’, encapsulates certain assumptions underpinning an academic imperialism that is over-immersed in academic jargon, behaving like terrorists hijacking our political discourse with radical theories that are trapped in the theoretical cemetery of Orwellian pessimism and self-contained exclusive clubs with an impermeable dogmatism, adopting the views that Block (1985) calls an anthropological theory of cognition, partly derived from Durkheim asserting that our everyday practices are determined by cognitive structures derived from tradition rather than experience.
Hengari should not worry but rest assured that the government will stick to its ‘contract with the people’ on the basis of which it was elected. It goes then without saying that the same people who reelected the President and the Cabinet after judging their performances, and trusted them with another mandate, are the same people who are going to judge the President’s legacy.
As for history, President Fidel Castro, who simply prefers to be called ‘Fidel’, once said, “History will absolve me”. So, let us leave history to historians and cross that bridge when we reach there.
My confrere is in France, ill content with his country and desirous of pleasing his sponsors and political handlers and never said anything positive about this President since day one. So, it is not surprising that he would not say anything positive about him and his Cabinet now.
I am quite sure that the President who took over from the Founding President and Father of the Nation at a critical moment and yet managed to keep the nation united, following in the footsteps of President Nujoma and witnessed the rite de passage of the nation from infancy into maturity, will certainly be remembered by many in this country, including the ‘born-frees’ for he understands that ‘respect is earned’ and that ‘the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the lord’.
Original Source: 
Original date published: 1 April 2010
Source: http://allafrica.com/stories/201004050828.html?viewall=1