EDITORIAL: A fish rots from the head

“A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes,” someone once said. The line has been attributed to Mark Twain, Winston Churchill and Thomas Jefferson, but it’s apparently most likely a twist on something Jonathan Swift once said: “Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it”. Regardless of who said it first, in the end, truth will catch up with the forerunning lie, and even beat it to the finish line. Indeed, lies have short legs, if any legs at all. The stink of the Fishrot scandal continues to fill the air we breathe. We have been living the lies and deceit of the very fathers we put in charge of the proverbial Namibian House. Namibia has been fertile ground for corruption for a long time, although global indices would show otherwise. Politicians here thump their chests at such flawed ratings that paint a rosy picture of a country that, in fact, is rotting from within. While the presumption of innocent until proven guilty is still applicable in the case of the two ministers and their cohorts indicted in the Fishrot saga, information that has surfaced so far suggests that something ‘fishy’ indeed occurred. Greed has gripped this country by the proverbial balls. Cabals have been created to steal that which should be a cake for all. Corrupt dynasties, often close to power, have been created to loot what is left of the country’s resources - while the rest of the citizenry must fend for themselves.