Barnabas Dlamini, Swaziland’s illegally-appointed Prime Minister has flown to the Bahamas to collect his human rights medal, even though there are doubts that it is a genuine award.
A ceremony will take place tomorrow (2 October 2010) hosted by World Citizen Awards. After an outcry following the announcement that Dlamini would receive a medal for his outstanding contribution to human rights, doubts were cast about whether the award was genuinely given for endeavour, or whether it was merely a vanity award.
After the Bahamas, Dlamini travels to Washington to see the International Monetary Fund in an attempt to secure its support for a loan from the African Development Bank.
Both the IMF and the World Bank declined to support the loan application previously because of the poor record Dlamini’s government had on handling the economy.
Dlamini will have to convince the IMF he can be trusted with the money. This may prove difficult because within the past few days it was announced in Swaziland that politicians’ perks would rise and that former prime ministers and their wives will be paid monthly allowances.
Finance Minister Majozi Sithole said these expenses were not budgeted for.
There are also fears that the government has run out of money and cannot pay its civil servants from October 2010 after it raised their salaries by 4.5 percent, against the wishes of the IMF.
Before he left Swaziland Dlamini told reporters he didn’t know when he would return. Maybe he knows something we don’t.
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