Swaziland’s ‘Monarchical Democracy’ is in full swing following
last month’s election and King Mswati III is busy appointing members of his
family and clan into positions in parliament. This week he appointed two princes, a princess and three
members of his own Dlamini clan to the House of Assembly.
At the national election on 20 September the king’s subjects
were only permitted to select 55 of the 65 members of the House of assembly. Political
parties were banned from taking part and candidates had to stand as individuals.
Now, nearly three weeks after the election the full results
of the vote have still not been published, despite promises from the Elections
and Boundaries Commission (EBC) that they would be released last week.
Prodemocracy campaigners have said that only about 100,000
of the 600,000 people entitled to vote actually did so. This followed a campaign
to boycott the election.
After the election is over King Mswati, who rules Swaziland as
sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch, appoints 10 members of the House of
Assembly and 20 members of the 30-strong Senate House. The other 10 senate members
are elected by the House of Assembly. No senators are elected by the people.
The king also appoints a Prime Minister. Speculation in the newspapers
in Swaziland, which all support the king’s autonomous rule, is that the present
PM Barnabas Dlamini will be reappointed.
Whatever the outcome, it is certain that the next PM will be
a Dlamini: all of Swaziland’s past PMs since independence from Britain in 1968
have been from the king’s clan.
The Swazi Observer,
a newspaper in effect owned by King Mswati, reported that ‘by law, a prime
minister is appointed among Dlamini members of the House of Assembly’.
But, no such law exists. The constitution of Swaziland,
which is often ignored by the king, simply states that the PM should be chosen
from among the members of the House of Assembly.
Weeks before the election King Mswati reported that he had
received a vision during a thunderstorm that told him that Swaziland should be
known as a ‘Monarchical Democracy’ where the people would work with the king to
govern the kingdom.
Later, the king confirmed to the Reuters news agency, that ‘Monarchical
Democracy’ was nothing more than a modern name for the tinkhundla system of
governance that already existed in Swaziland.
No comments:
Post a Comment