Credible evidence is
emerging that people are offering bribes to members of the House of Assembly to
be given a seat on the Swaziland Senate.
Swaziland is an absolute
monarchy and none of the 30 members of the Swazi Senate are elected by the
people. Twenty are appointed by King Mswati III (who
recently renamed the kingdom Eswatini) and the rest are elected by the House
of Assembly.
Following the
election of the House of Assembly on Friday (21 September 2018) people have
approached the new members with bribes, the Times of Swaziland reported on Tuesday.
It said offers of bribes in
‘the region of E10,000’ (US$700) were made to one member of parliament for his
vote. It was refused, the newspaper added.
The Times reported one anonymous MP saying, ‘I have already met a few
people who have expressed their wish to be voted into Senate.’
It added, ‘Unconfirmed
allegations have been to the effect that Senate seats could go as high as E60,000
paid to each MP.’
The Times reported another new MP said ‘he had received the calls to
meet certain individuals, they were sceptical in case it could be a trap’.
The report is not the first
suggesting bribes are offered for Senate seats. In the run-up to the election Ncumbi
Maziya, a Commissioner at the Elections and Boundaries Commission (EBC), told a
workshop for election candidates that members of parliament charged
E60,000 for their vote.
The, Swazi Observer newspaper reported in
August 2018, ‘He said parliamentarians are the most corrupt people. He said he
has since gathered that parliamentarians are swindling money from people who
want to make it into Senate.
It added, ‘Maziya said he learnt that people are made
to fork out money amounting to E60,000 if they want to get a vote to be elected
into Senate. “If you have no money you won’t make it into Senate,” Maziya
stated.’
Corruption is believed to be widespread in Swaziland. In
December 2017, Swaziland’s Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC)
issued a report suggesting that 79 percent of 3,090 people
interviewed in a survey believed that corruption within government was ‘rife’.
The survey suggested that corruption was perceived to
take place mostly in rural councils. The perceived major causes of corruption
were poverty (58 percent), unemployment (54 percent) and greed (41 percent). The
survey was conducted by the Swazi Ministry of Justice and Constitutional
Affairs through the ACC.
In June 2017, the Open
Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA) reported the
kingdom, was riddled with corruption in both private and public places.
It said, ‘The results of grand corruption are there
for all to see in the ever increasing wealth of high-level civil servants and officers
of state.’
It added, ‘For a long time the police, the Ministry of
Finance, the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Trade as well as the Department
of Customs and Excise have often been implicated in corrupt practices.’
It gave many examples including the case of the
government propaganda organisation Swaziland Broadcasting and Information
Service (SBIS) where E1.6 million was paid to service providers for the maintenance
of a machine that was neither broken nor in use. The officer who authorised the bogus job
cards has since been promoted and transferred to another government
department.
The report called The effectiveness
of anti-corruption agencies in Southern Africa stated, ‘This
type of behaviour is common albeit covert and therefore difficult to monitor as
goods and services are undersupplied or rerouted for personal use. The results
of grand corruption are there for all to see in the ever increasing wealth of
high-level civil servants and officers of state.’
See also
Swaziland
Election Officer Reveals MPs Sell Their Votes When Electing Kingdom’s Senators
Swaziland
‘Riddled With Corruption’
https://swazimedia.blogspot.co.uk/2017/06/swaziland-riddled-with-corruption.html
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