It does not happen too often that the Chairperson of a Constitutional Assembly hands in a Ph.D. thesis concerning the democratic process in that same country for which he chaired the constitutional process. Last week a booklet was published by Hage Geingob: "Drafting Namibia’s Constitution" - and it is most certainly worth reading the entire 67 pages (and the foot notes as well!).

Let‘s for example quote the passage on Personality Issues (pp 61 - 62): „Consultations between the president (Dr Sam Nujoma, Ed.) and the prime minister (Hage Geingob, Ed.) were routine and very useful during the first term and during half of the second term, and executive relations were close. However, after the second elections (1994) when, for the first time, the president was elected directly by the people (as per constitutional requirement) and received 72 % of the votes, relations between the president and the prime minister changed. Perhaps, the president, now having been elected directly by the people, thought that he was mandated to rule and was accountable only to the people."

Geingob continues: „However, a brave cabinet and also the last Swapo Party Congress held in August 2002 proved that the president could still be called to order in Namibia. There can nevertheless be attempts by presidential coteries to encourage the president to be ‚presidential‘. These sycophants, who surround the president, are interested in their own survival and seek to please the president by ‚informing‘ him that he was very popular with the people. This sycophancy may be reflected in their behaviour of promoting omnipotence of the presidency."

Mentioning different forms this could take (head of state and head of government, commander-in-chief, tatekulu, revolutio-nary, founding father etc), Geingob then quotes Bratton and Van de Walle: „Presidentialism implies systema-tic concentration of political power in the hands of one individual, who resists delegating all but the most trivial decision-making tasks".

Just to carry on: „Such a trend seems to be emerging in Namibia"