Open letter to the incoming president
Dear Meekulu,
Allow me to firstly congratulate you on your well-deserved victory.
As a victor, you now will be tested and questioned both by the people you appoint to help you captain this ship called Namibia as well as those who voted you into the position you are to assume on 21 March.
Honourable, I am afraid you have come to lead us at a rather trying time, with so much change in the region as well as internationally. New administrations have come into power in various countries. And with those new leaders come new cultures and leadership philosophies. We have seen and felt the consequences of the change in the USA government in just one month. Which begs the question(s): do we have a special risk committee strategising around the degree of damage as time goes? Do we have a recovery plan in place? Is there a new model being engineered?
This letter is addressed to you with the highest respect. I write to Meekulu, begging her to be the audience and the change we need.
Now please allow me to direct your attention to some issues that may seem insignificant but are pivotal:
1. We have numerous government entities that are and have been making losses for decades. I refuse to accept that is all they can do because these institutions retire executives as millionaires. (Are we running these entities sustainably as we do our own lives?)
2. We now have a dying health system – the system that is tasked with keeping the country alive. I would gladly pinpoint the weaknesses, but they are there for everyone to see. We keep saying the USAID is to blame, and we have not foreseen this, but the point is, we should have. The manner in which we have been doing things is clearly not sustainable. We needed to make provisions for worst-case scenarios, Risk 101.
3. We have leaders who reason that parastatals are not for profit-making; that is very wrong! While we are in agreement that parastatals’ primary objectives are mainly service delivery, we cannot run them into the ground until they are no longer able to even deliver services altogether. The entities, ministries, etc., should and MUST be run in a sustainable manner.
Lastly, there is an old saying. “Ihadi wanene Omutwe umwe”.
Would it not be beneficial to the administration to hold a public dialogue from time to time, bring together specialists from different walks of life to investigate, study, remodel and advise on most things deemed insignificant? Not as employees – but mere stakeholders engaged with different expertise and experiences. The goal is to encourage accountability and promote sustainability. We are shouting power to the youth, but let us acknowledge that the youth is selfish and hungry, all characteristics of a cooking disaster.
We can therefore only ensure a going concern if there is accountability and a practiced attitude of sustainability.
Your humble servant,
Martin Haipa
Allow me to firstly congratulate you on your well-deserved victory.
As a victor, you now will be tested and questioned both by the people you appoint to help you captain this ship called Namibia as well as those who voted you into the position you are to assume on 21 March.
Honourable, I am afraid you have come to lead us at a rather trying time, with so much change in the region as well as internationally. New administrations have come into power in various countries. And with those new leaders come new cultures and leadership philosophies. We have seen and felt the consequences of the change in the USA government in just one month. Which begs the question(s): do we have a special risk committee strategising around the degree of damage as time goes? Do we have a recovery plan in place? Is there a new model being engineered?
This letter is addressed to you with the highest respect. I write to Meekulu, begging her to be the audience and the change we need.
Now please allow me to direct your attention to some issues that may seem insignificant but are pivotal:
1. We have numerous government entities that are and have been making losses for decades. I refuse to accept that is all they can do because these institutions retire executives as millionaires. (Are we running these entities sustainably as we do our own lives?)
2. We now have a dying health system – the system that is tasked with keeping the country alive. I would gladly pinpoint the weaknesses, but they are there for everyone to see. We keep saying the USAID is to blame, and we have not foreseen this, but the point is, we should have. The manner in which we have been doing things is clearly not sustainable. We needed to make provisions for worst-case scenarios, Risk 101.
3. We have leaders who reason that parastatals are not for profit-making; that is very wrong! While we are in agreement that parastatals’ primary objectives are mainly service delivery, we cannot run them into the ground until they are no longer able to even deliver services altogether. The entities, ministries, etc., should and MUST be run in a sustainable manner.
Lastly, there is an old saying. “Ihadi wanene Omutwe umwe”.
Would it not be beneficial to the administration to hold a public dialogue from time to time, bring together specialists from different walks of life to investigate, study, remodel and advise on most things deemed insignificant? Not as employees – but mere stakeholders engaged with different expertise and experiences. The goal is to encourage accountability and promote sustainability. We are shouting power to the youth, but let us acknowledge that the youth is selfish and hungry, all characteristics of a cooking disaster.
We can therefore only ensure a going concern if there is accountability and a practiced attitude of sustainability.
Your humble servant,
Martin Haipa
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