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TINKHUNDLA BUDGET WEAKNESSES

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On paper, the tinkhudla system is supposed to be people-driven. It is supposed to thrive and be of service to the people through decentralisation bottom-up from grass route.


According to its marketing officers and managers, it is a participatory system and decisions are bottom-up. From a distance, this sounds marvellous and a second-to-nothing system of government.
However, in reality, this was just a vision that those who govern are operating diametrically opposite it. The initiators, immediately after pronunciation, decentralised acquisition of birth, marriage and death certificates (BMDs’) this also included the Personal Identity Numbers (PIN).


Subsequent governments reversed this principle and re-centralised the BMDs,’  national budget formulation does not consider the concerns of the people, in fact it is drawn and driven top-down and peoples priorities are not given priority, the Bill of rights in the constitution is selectively enjoyed even within the tinkhundla structures.


An example is that freedom of expression access to the public broadcaster is open to ministers, Bucopho (constituency councillors) and Tindvuna tetinkhundla (constituency headmen) and not so accessible to members of parliament.
That is why, as the Swazi Democratic Party (SWADEPA), we feel tinkhundla has dismally failed the people and needs total democratic overhaul in order to be responsive to the concerns and priorities of the people.
This would be a situation in which the voice of the electorate through its representatives is not only heard but respected and done, as per dictates of Section 84 of the Constitution.
I want to compare the tinkhundla way of preparing the budget with how it is done in a multiparty democratic dispensation.


Since the tinkhundla system of governance was promulgated in 1978, current decentralisation policies were announced and established.
There has never been any civic education on budgeting and how it relates to the ordinary people. Budget has always been the business of cabinet and taken to Parliament for adoption and debate. So, if there is anything the populace was never given awareness of, it was that they had a role in calling government to scrutiny, as enshrined in Section 63 of the Constitution (g) which reads:
“The exercise and enjoyment of rights and freedoms is inseparable from the performance of duties and obligations, and accordingly, it shall be the duty of  every citizen to protect and preserve public property and to combat misuse and waste of public funds.”


For citizens to be able to exercise this constitution-protected right, there is need for deliberate government sponsored civic education and awareness campaigns to empower the citizens about this very important right and duty.
This is not done to ensure prevalence of the status quo, where people do not participate in national policy making, let alone hearing their developmental social and economic priorities. No. In the status quo, people are never asked but have to bear the brunt of paying tax.

 

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