…as ACC declines to investigate appointment
Staff Writer
President Hage Geingob again has been entangled in the fight between the City of Windhoek (CoW) Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Robert Kahimise and the city council over its decision to reappoint City Police Chief Abraham Kanime on a three year contract.
This comes after the CoW Chief Executive Officer wrote to the President on Friday asking for his intervention after the Swapo led council pushed through the appointment of Kanime despite a contradicting legal opinion and objection from Kahimise, who is the municipality’s chief accounting officer.
When contacted for comment, Kahimise was tightlipped when quizzed on whether he had written to the President.
“That is confidential and I cannot comment on that,” he said adding that he was still considering his options when it came to taking legal action against the municipality.
Last year, Geingob was forced to intervene in City of Windhoek affairs by ordering a truce at the council. He insisted that the councilors to reinstate then suspended city police chief Abraham Kanime and to drop disciplinary charges against municipal chief executive Robert Kahimise after the two had been engaged in a long-running feud.
Developments at the council have caused ruptures between the CEO and the council after a council meeting appointed an acting CEO to approve the renewal of Kanime’s contract despite Kahimise being in office.
The situation has been worsened by the fact that the new contract offered to the police chief will give him the option to report to the city management committee instead of the CEO, a move which creates a parallel structure in the day-to-day operations of the city.
The move by Kahimise comes after the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) on Monday revealed that it had declined a request for it to investigate the council’s decision to appoint Kanime.
“There was a document sent to the ACC regarding the decision of the council and we have taken a decision not to investigate. I received the report and decided that it does not warrant a criminal offence. The ACC is not investigating this as it is an administrative decision which needs to be taken under review if a person who has an interest and is aggrieved,” ACC Director General, Paulus Noa said.
He said the ACC did not have the legal powers to set aside the council decision and thus the High Court was the competent court to deal with the matter.
“The normal process is to approach the High Court for it to set aside the council decision. The document showed that the CEO has approached the courts, which is the right procedure because the ACC is not the right body to review such a decision,” Noah said.
Questions sent to State House were not answered by the time of posting this article.
