The British High Commissioner to Swaziland has criticised the kingdom because it has banned political parties.
Paul Boateng, in a statement published in the Times of Swaziland today (15 September 2008) was commenting ahead of Swaziland’s elections which take place on Friday.
He said he expected the Swazi Constitution which came into effect in 2006 to pave the way to democracy. ‘My government has made no secret of the fact that we hope this will mark a first crucial step towards the introduction of a fully-fledged multi-party system, as envisaged by the Southern African Development Community (SADC) electoral principles and guidelines that Swaziland has itself signed up to.
‘These are regional norms that the rest of the world supports and which should surely be implemented in every SADC country.’
But, sadly, the truth is there is no evidence that democracy will be coming to Swaziland anytime soon.
Boateng is not the only one to criticise the non-democratic nature of Swaziland where political parties are banned and the parliament has no real powers. The present Prime Minister of Swaziland Themba Dlamini was appointed by King Mswati III even though Dlamini had not been elected to parliament.
Boateng said that the people of Swaziland deserve a democracy just as others in the SADC region enjoyed.
Boateng reminded Swaziland that last year the UK provided £3.3m (nearly 6 million US dollars or E24 million) alone in humanitarian assistance to respond to food shortages in the kingdom.
To put that figure in context, it is about 60 percent of the 10 million US dollars it is widely believed that the King and the Swazi Government spent last weekend on the 40/40 celebrations to mark the king’s 40th birthday and also the 40th anniversary of Swaziland’s independence from Britain.
Meanwhile, seven in ten Swazis live in abject poverty earning less than one US dollar a day. Six in ten have received international food aid this year and four in ten are reported to be moving from hunger to starvation.
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