Supporters of King Mswati III’s autocratic regime in
Swaziland say that the Swazi people accept the present political system and do
not want change, but evidence from the way they vote suggests the opposite is
the case.
As Swaziland prepares for a national election later this
year, a campaign for a boycott is growing. Opponents of the election say that
it is undemocratic because political parties are banned from taking part and
the parliament that is elected has no powers, because King Mswati rules as an
absolute monarch.
The opponents have been silenced, often violently, by the
king’s police and security forces. Police chiefs are on record saying that opposition
to the election is a threat to state security. Some opposition leaders have
been charged with sedition.
Members of the Swazi Government, which is not elected by
the popular vote, but selected by the king, say Swazi people, voicing their
opinion through sibaya, want the present system to stay and do not want to hear
opposition to the election.
Sibaya is an event where the king allows people to gather
at the royal cattle kraal to voice opinions about matters they feel are
important to them. It is suggested by the king’s supporters that sibaya is the
supreme policy making body in the kingdom.
But, an analysis of how people vote at election time
suggests that Swazi people do not support the present system.
At the last election in 2008, fewer than half the people
eligible to vote actually did so. A report by the Electoral Institute of
Southern Africa (EISA) published shortly after the election, using official
statistics, revealed that a although a record 88 percent of the 400,000
estimated eligible population registered for the elections, when it came time
to vote fewer than half these people (47.4 per cent), actually did so.
In its analysis called Election Observer Mission Report,
EISA recorded that in 2008, 350,778
people actually registered to vote, but only 189,559 (54 percent) of those
people went on to vote.
EISA also noted that the numbers of people voting at
elections had fallen since 1993, the first election in Swaziland where
registration of voters took place. National elections in Swaziland take place
every five years. It reported the turnout of registered voters who actually
voted in 2003 was 57.9 percent; in 1998 it was 60.4 percent; and in 1993 it was
61.0 percent.
EISA attributed the low turnout in 2008 to a campaign for
a boycott of the election by progressives in Swaziland.
It reported on the 2008 election, ‘In many ways the call
by the trade unions, most of the political parties and many civil society
organisations for a boycott of the election transformed the election into a
referendum on the legitimacy of the new Constitution and the political order
that it enshrines.
‘The King’s response to the boycott call was to summon
the nation to the royal cattle byre and urge the people to register for the
election and to vote. The government’s response has been to pour resources into
the election to enable the Elections and Boundaries Commission (EBC) to conduct
it efficiently and to ensure that voters were able to vote.
‘The chiefs for their part mobilised their subjects in the
rural areas to register and to vote.’
The report added that the Swazi people turned up in large
numbers to register, ‘reversing the apathy that characterised the 2003
election: a record 88 percent of the 400,000 estimated eligible population
registered for these elections’.
It added, ‘The best indication we have of whether the
boycott was a success or not is the voter turnout rate.’
It added there was, ‘a slight but steady decline (3
percent) in the number of voters casting their ballots between 1993 and 2003.
‘However, in the 2008 elections, despite the large number
of voters who registered for the election and efforts of the authorities to
galvanise voters, the turnout actually dropped by nearly 4 percent, 1 percent
more than over the previous three elections together. Thus only 47.4% of the
400,000 estimated eligible voters actually voted.’
‘From this we may conclude that large numbers of Swazis
heeded the boycott call and thereby signalled their disenchantment with the
current Constitutional dispensation,’ the report said.
See also
GOVERNMENT WRONG ON ELECTION FREEDOM
HUNGRY WILL SELL THEIR VOTES FOR FOOD
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