Swazi youth to
launch campaign against “undemocratic elections”
Kenworthy News Media March 13, 2013
“Swaziland Youth
Congress (SWAYOCO) calls upon all youth to a national rally at Msunduza,
Mbabane on the 6th of April 2013 to launch an anti-Tinkhundla elections
campaign – a call for multi-party democracy,” SWAYOCO said in a press release
Wednesday, writes Kenworthy News Media.
“This will be a day of action that will … send a clear
message to the Tinkundla regime and the whole world that the youth are giving a
red card to the undemocratic elections.”
According to the press release, the upcoming Tinkhundla
elections in Swaziland are “undemocratic” and “meaningless” for a number of
reasons, particularly because absolute monarch King Mswati III personally
appoints part – and has to approve the rest – of the parliament, appoints most
of the senate, and the whole cabinet, including the Prime Minister, and because
political parties are banned.
For those who are unfamiliar with Swaziland’s
traditionalistic Tinkhundla system, it is a system where candidates are elected
through a public gathering at the village level under a local chief. All
legislation can be vetoed by the king, which means that Swaziland’s elections
reinforce “organised certainty, since they reproduce the prevailing political
status quo in Swaziland … elections have increasingly become arenas for
competition over patronage and not policy,” according to a report by
African policy research institute, the Institute for Security Studies.
SWAYOCO more bluntly refers to Tinkhundla in the press
statement as “a system of royal enforced exploitation that institutionalizes
the looting national resources, corrupting the whole social fiber of our
society … arresting, harassing, torturing and even murdering all those who are
calling for a genuine people’s government.”
See also
ELECTION: WARNING NOT TO USE FACEBOOK
CALL TO
BOYCOTT ELECTION GROWS
SWAZI
ELECTION ‘WILL BE A FRAUD’
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