King Mswati III, the absolute king of Swaziland /
eSwatini, has declared last September’s national election in his kingdom a ‘success’,
even though the full results have never been published.
The King
told the state opening of parliament on Friday (8 February 2019) there was ‘over
60 percent’ voter turnout.
However, there is no way to confirm this because the
Kingdom’s Elections and Boundaries Commission (EBC) has not published the full results,
nearly five months after the poll.
After the House of Assembly election took place on 21
September 2018 the EBC promptly announced the winners at the 59 constituencies
(known as tinkhundla) but no break-down giving the number of votes cast for
each candidate has been released.
This is not new in Swaziland: the full results of the
previous election held in 2013 have never been published.
In Swaziland, political parties are banned from taking
part in elections and the people are only allowed to select 59 members of the House
of Assembly; the King appoints a further 10. No members of the 30-strong Swazi
Senate are elected by the people; the King appoints 20 members and the House of
Assembly elects 10. Following the election King Mswati appointed six
members of his Royal Family to the House of Assembly and eight
members to the Senate.
The EBC has not released the results of the House of
Assembly election, although they are known. The two national newspapers in
Swaziland published some results from individual tinkhundla as they were
announced on the night of the election.
The EBC has the capacity to publish the results. After
the first round of the election (known as the Primary Election) on 24 August
2018, the EBC uploaded on its website all the results. An
analysis of that data discovered a total of 156,973 people voted for
members of the House of Assembly at the Primary Election; 28.83 percent of
those who had registered.
In June 2018 after revising the figure the EBC
announced that 544,310
people had registered to vote. It said earlier that 600,000 people
in the kingdom were eligible to register. This meant, according to EBC figures,
that 90.7 percent of eligible people had done so. The
EBC figure was questioned after allegations were made of election
law breaking. No copy of the national electoral roll was made public.
The size of
the turnout in the Primary Election is important as voting is the only way
people in Swaziland have to demonstrate their support (or lack of it) for the
political system. In 1973, King Sobhuza II tore up the constitution, banned
political parties and began
to rule by decree. Although a new
constitution came into effect in 2006, little has changed and King
Sobhuza’s son King Mswati III continues to rule as an absolute monarch.
Political opposition is banned in Swaziland and those who campaign for
democracy are often charged under the Suppression
of Terrorism Act.
The voting figures for the
Primary Election suggested a lack of support for the political process. The
results of the primary Election have since been removed from the EBC website.
The final round of the
election (known as the Secondary Election) was marred by violence and
accusations of bribery,
vote-rigging and other malpractice.
Following the election the United
Nations Human Rights Committee (HRC) reported the
‘legitimacy and credibility’ of the election was ‘significantly hampered’
because political parties were banned. It said the King had ‘excessive powers’ in the appointment of the
Government, Parliament and the judiciary.
In its report the HRC said, ‘The legitimacy and
credibility of the elections was significantly hampered by the design of
the electoral mechanisms as a culture of political pluralism is
lacking. There is no freedom of genuine and pluralistic political
debate, political parties are unable to register, contest elections, field
candidates or otherwise participate in the formation of a Government.’
In its election report the African Union (AU) called
on Swaziland to end the ban on political parties. AU mission head James Michel, the former Seychelles president,
said, ‘The mission encourages the eSwatini authorities to
consider reviewing the 1973 decree on the ban on political parties and allow
them to freely participate in the election.’
The Southern Africa Development Community (SADC)
Election Observation Mission in its report said the election had been
successful, ‘in line with the Constitution of the Kingdom of Eswatini, and the
guiding Legal Framework’. Unlike the AU, it did not have a mandate to consider
whether Swaziland was a democracy.
The Eswatini Elections Support Network which operates
under the auspices of the Coordinating Assembly of NGOs (CANGO) made no comment
about the election being ‘free and fair’.
Richard
Rooney
See also
Swaziland election observer groups say vote was
‘peaceful’ but fall short of ‘free and fair’
Violence, corruption, vote-buying reported in
Swaziland election. Journalists barred from entering counting centres
Swaziland
(Eswatini) Election 2018: Links to Information and Analysis From Swazi Media
Commentary
https://swazimedia.blogspot.com/2018/09/swaziland-eswatini-election-2018-links.html
Organised Certainty, Why elections in Swaziland are not democratic
https://www.scribd.com/document/384752084/Organised-Certainty-Why-Elections-in-Swaziland-Are-Not-Democratic
Organised Certainty, Why elections in Swaziland are not democratic
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