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Namibia: Inside the Cabinet Reshuffle
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The Namibian (Windhoek)
11 April 2008
Posted to the web 11 April 2008
Alfredo Tjiurimo Hengari
Windhoek
The logic behind a Cabinet reshuffle can range from the banal to the serious.
President Pohamba's most recent reshuffle may not escape these two binary confrontations.
Ordinarily, in terms of the banal, a Cabinet reshuffle may serve the dialectical purpose of rewarding performing ministers and it can in the same vein punish them for their performance.
Their good work could become a threat to certain interests, both economic and political.
In terms of the serious, a reshuffle can also be a means of cutting to size the deadwood in a Cabinet.
By bringing new faces into the executive, a Cabinet reshuffle is a communication tool on the part of the President - essentially saying to citizens that he or she is in charge, and is responding accordingly to the challenges facing the nation.
In light of the latter, President Pohamba's reshuffle on the eve of the State of the Nation address is symbolically important.
It also serves the concrete purpose of convincing us that the realignment of political personnel is in line and consistent with the objectives and message in the State of the Nation address.
Essentially, that is the form and the theory of the Cabinet reshuffle.
The substance of a reshuffle is contingent on both structural and systemic factor.
Most importantly, for a Cabinet reshuffle to make sense, it must respond to vertical (systemic) and horizontal (structural) expectations.
In a horizontal sense, it ought to provide clear pointers in terms of Government management and what the new personnel bring to the new appointments.
While the vertical expectation relates to the superior public good as the ultimate beneficiary of the reshuffle.
Systemic factors, limiting the extent to which we may get excited about the recent Cabinet reshuffle, find lucid expression in the way the Government functions and whether it works.
It takes our Government, awfully that is, a whole lot of time to think legislation and effect Government policy.
In some instances, we have bills in the thinking and drafting processes going as far back as 1999.
Additionally, the reshuffle comes at a time when the political calendar is left with no less than 18 months before the next presidential and legislative elections.
This leaves little wriggle-room for new ministers and redeployed political personnel to effect any meaningful changes.
Furthermore, if the reshuffle is not accompanied by any letters of mission: setting clear objectives and timelines for ministers and their deputies, the means through which the President and the public can measure the performance of ministers are largely absent.
In the absence of such expectations, ministers function in a vacuum and have to improvise or they have to rely in most cases on the bureaucracy to think policy.
While the reshuffle appears at a quick glance wide-ranging, there is less vertical clarity as to some of the motivations behind the appointments, including the omissions.
The reshuffle leaves the engaged spectator asking the question as to why a performing minister like Joel Kaapanda would be moved from Works in the middle of crucial reform processes, idem for Alfeus Naruseb.
Quite simply, the changes also beg the question as to why Helmut Angula, who visibly acquainted himself well in his duties at the NPC, was moved.
Oddly, he moves to Works with a new deputy, and a new permanent secretary to compound problems of institutional memory.
Essentially, these are changes and omissions that leave the analyst perplexed.
In the main, allowing performing ministers in strategic ministries to complete their work, or by creating super-ministries would have given the President more scope to cover the weak links in the executive.
The incoming faces would then be brought in to cover non-performing, but strategic ministries in line with national priorities.
We should also look at this reshuffle against the backdrop of our political order.
It is perhaps time for its evolution because it limits the choices at the disposal of the President in making wide-ranging changes to his Cabinet.
The President is oftentimes forced to look no further than his immovable party personnel in the legislature, and the skills outside the party political realm remain untapped.
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Alternatively, the President should strengthen the cross-sectoral advisory capacities in the Presidency.
In the final analysis, those of us immersed in such subjects can all too easily slip into a sort of glass bead game of institutional winners and losers.
But Namibians worry less about such political abstractions.
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| Copyright © 2008 The Namibian. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections -- or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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