FREEDOM OF INFORMATION FIGHT

The Times of Swaziland is fighting the kingdom’s government to find out how much it cost the taxpayer to send the Prime Minister on an all expenses trip to the Bahamas.

The Prime Minister went on a trip to receive an award. But before he left nobody, not even the PM himself, knew what the award was for.

So, off the PM went with his wife for a luxury holiday. Well, we assume it was a luxury, no-expenses-spared, trip because he is the PM after all. But the problem is, as the Times explained in an editorial on Tuesday (23 October 2007), we cannot be told how much the trip cost because this information is ‘classified’.

This is not the only setback the Times has had in its pursuit of information on behalf of its readers.

The Times editorial explains, ‘For months now we have been trying, without success, to get the list of winners for government tenders.

‘The tender board has always been very cooperative in doing the hard part, that of providing us with the tender openings, inclusive of prices. But when it comes to giving us only one company name, suddenly everybody is too engaged to attend to us.

‘Why? Why would the board want us to believe that this is a highly-guarded secret?’

The answer is obvious, of course. Swaziland is not a democracy and those in ruling positions can do what they like. That’s why the PM goes half way across the world to the Bahamas to collect an award he knew nothing about. And he does this at the Swazi taxpayers’ expense because he knows he can get away with it.

It’s the same with the tenders. We know that corruption is rife in Swaziland and it is estimated that it is costing ordinary honest Swazi people E40 million (about 6 million US dollars) each and every month.

So will we ever be able to find out what the Swazi Government is spending the Swazi people’s money on?

Earlier this year Parliament issued a draft bill on freedom of information. The first objective of this bill is to ‘Encourage a culture of openness, transparency and accountability in public bodies by providing for access to information held by these bodies in order to enable every citizen to fully exercise and protect their constitutional right of freedom of expression.’

If such a bill was in place now and people in government respected the bill, the Times could get its information and all of us would be able to find out a lot more about where the money government is entrusted with by the Swazi people is going.

But, like the Swaziland Constitution (which allows freedom of assembly but bans political parties or public meetings unless the local chief agrees) even if the Freedom of Information bill becomes law, the ruling elite will simply ignore it and the ordinary Swazi can go whistle for the information.