OWN CORRESPONDENT, Windhoek | Wednesday
NAMIBIAN President Sam Nujoma has declared himself ready to run for a fourth five-year term if the countrys people indicate they want him to stay beyond the end of his term in 2005, according to local media reports.
“If the Namibian people say that we want you do this (a fourth term), I am always at the disposal of the Namibian people,” Nujoma told BBC correspondent Frauke Roschlau in an interview published in The Namibian.
“There is a constitution that guides our procedures that ought to be followed,” Nujoma said in the interview.
The Namibian constitution was amended late 1999 to allow Nujoma, now 73, to stand for a third term in office.
The ruling South West Africa People’s Organisation (SWAPO) made the amendment after quashing demands from within own ranks that the succession first be publicly debated.
Nujoma himself initially suggested the issue be put to vote but later fell silent on the prospect of a referendum.
He has been president since independence in 1990, and won 77 percent of the vote in the 1999 presidential election.
The original constitution limited the incumbent to two consecutive terms but SWAPO amended it to allow the “first President of Namibia (to) hold office as President for three terms”.
In 1994 Nujoma declared himself willing to make way for a younger candidate but later changed his mind and stayed on.
Ruling party insiders have speculated that Nujoma’s current ambitions may be prompted by the fear that a succession battle could tear the ruling party apart before the polls at the end of 2004.
Neighbouring Zambia is going through a similar crisis at present, with President Frederick Chiluba dismissing several of his top officials for publicly criticising his ambitions for a third, currently extra-constitutional, term in office. – AFP
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