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IS OUR CONSTITUTION SO GOOD?

13/07/2017 04:14:00 By Vusi Kunene

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I feel embarrassed when a foreigner comes to our country and has the guts to tell one of our ministers that he is an embarrassment. This is an indictment, not only to the minister but to most of us as well. Here is a minister failing in his duties and we are silent; saying nothing as a nation.

I am not sure and have not bothered to look at the qualifications of the person who had the courage to call a spade a spade. I am not sure if he qualifies to assess and judge the situation in our schools and form an opinion that is well analysed. What I know is that all is not well in our schools and Swazis did not have the courage to tell the minister.
This brings me to our Constitution and to look at it in the face of such utterances from people looking at the situation in our country from outside. I dare say they are looking at it objectively as I do not want to believe they can be subjective or biased.

What must happen to a minister who is not performing? The Constitution is silent on this and I wonder if we want to have a minister who is not performing for the duration of his term of office. The only thing we can hope for is a Cabinet reshuffle by the prime minister and the underperforming minister be relieved of his duties. However, in my opinion, this would not be good enough as it is subject to abuse. If the prime minister favours the underperforming minister and not be willing to relieve him of his duties, we will be forced to make do with the ‘embarrassment’ for the full term.
I wish we could have a provision in our Constitution that guides the prime minister on when to reshuffle Cabinet or when to recall a minister. Of course there should be a guide or even a committee that works with the prime minister on this because he can also use it to settle scores.

Our Constitution also opens the process of appointment of Cabinet to abuse. Section 67(1) provides that the King shall appoint a prime minister from among members of the House acting on recommendations of the King’s Advisory Council. This may not be good enough as we are not sure of the credentials of the people in the King’s Advisory Council but I want to believe they are in good standing in society.
This is because these people are subject to public scrutiny before being appointed into the council. But the positive in all this is that the King acts upon a recommendation of a number of people whom I believe look for the best candidate if they are worthy of sitting in that council.

In my opinion, the problem is with the appointment of ministers. Section 67(2) provides that the King shall appoint ministers from both chambers of Parliament on the recommendation of the prime minister.
My problem then is that the very same prime minister who made the recommendations has to perform the reshuffle when ministers are not underperforming. In my opinion, this means the prime minister is reviewing himself because the very same person whom he recommended for appointment is the very same person he has to say he is not performing. Are we not putting too much on the prime minister’s plate while we are not even providing him with guidance on how to perform this task?

Basically are we not saying to the prime minister he must swallow his pride and say he made a wrong recommendation? What if it is a friend who is underperforming? I believe we need to protect the prime minister by providing guidance on how, why and when to reshuffle his Cabinet ministers.
We also have to make sure that the prime minister is not the only person to recommend on the appointment of ministers but have a panel that will do this.

Another problem from our Constitution is that the prime minister has to make recommendations from both Houses. In the House of Assembly the people are elected on individual merit by their communities. It would be a fallacy to then expect the prime minister to know all these people yet he is expected to make recommendations on the very same people whom he does not know. This will lead to some people who are not capable being recommended and appointed and we will have ‘embarrassments’ as ministers. I hope this will show that after more than a decade our Constitution needs to be visited and I hope someone in Parliament is hearing this call.