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BUDGET OF NO SIGNIFICANCE

25/02/2019 07:57:00 By Vusi Sibisi

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MANY moons ago, in this column, I ventilated on the logic and rationale of national/government budgeting within the context of the Tinkhundla political system in the face of the rule of law crisis, not to mention the nature and form of the obtaining polity.

And as hours tick into minutes and minutes into seconds in the countdown to Finance Minister Neal Rejkenberg’s maiden budget speech this week, in a Parliament fixated with appearances and dress sense of lawmakers in the face of daunting national challenges, the subject matter is back in the public’s cross-hairs. Ah yes, Members of Parliament (MPs) have been inordinately focusing on each other’s appearances and dress sense as if this mattered to their principals, the electorate, when this country is faced with monumental challenges they should be focusing on with intensity.

Miraculously, in-between these infantile nit-picking MPs somehow still found time to turn their attention to serious national matters and were able to pass, albeit with muted protestations from some of them, the E76 million supplementary budget tabled by Minister Rejkenberg. Not surprisingly, some of the funds were already being utilized thus emboldening the long-held belief that Parliament was nothing but a façade to project a modern democratic State while it was a mere rubber stamp for Executive decisions. Try as they might to explain that the money in question had been appropriated by Parliament but never used for their intended purposes, the loyalists were not convincing especially on the backdrop of a historically wasteful government with a penchant for suicidal political decisions to stem criticism from the taxpayer.

As it were, my questioning the waste of time in preparing and debating the national budget on this column some years ago was pre-empted by extra-Legislative diversion of funds to projects other than those for which they had been appropriated by Parliament. Some MPs somewhat alluded to that fact when debating the supplementary budget. But they wrongly blamed this on principal secretaries who, under the political status quo, cannot pass the buck elsewhere if they want to keep their meal tickets even when they do this not out of their own volition but under duress. That blame, and every other woe facing this kingdom, should be expressly reserved for and targeted at the Byzantine Tinkhundla political system that appears to be exonerated from blameworthiness when it is this country’s primary Achilles’ heel.

A cursory glance at the annual reports of government departments tells a sad story of reckless misuse of resources, especially financial, over which the elected representatives of the people are powerless to do anything. There are departments that perennially overspend on their budgets such that this has now become a new normal and acceptable. Given the deficit in transparency and accountability occasioned by the nature of the Tinkhundla political system, I would not be surprised if a lot of dirt is hidden from public scrutiny. Unfortunately, the only time a forensic investigation into the operations of government can happen is once a pluralistic body politic replaces the current system that protects and shields the leadership from accountability, an institutional weakness that is responsible for the sorry state of the economy and government cash-flow challenges.

The offshoot of this inherent weakness of the political system is, of course, the rule of law crisis. Put differently, the political hegemony is not compatible with the rule of law. What happened on November 28, 2002 when then PM, the late Sibusiso Dlamini issued his infamous statement to the effect that government no longer recognised and respected some judgments of the courts, was merely a manifestation of this incompatibility. In the face of this established fact it is conclusive that nothing is inviolable under the hegemony of the obtaining polity. Of course this also includes the budget.

It can and is often diverted at the whims of those controlling the levers of power and no one, including Parliament, can do anything about it.
The net effect of this is the precarious position this country finds itself in.

That the economy has been constricting partly due to a glut of foreign direct investments (FDIs) is somewhat directly related to some of these factors – lack of transparency and accountability on the part of the leadership coupled with a politically comatose population that is powerless to do anything. That, essentially, is an abridged content of the country’s negative profile that potential investors access from organisations such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) before venturing to these shores. And as can be expected, after perusing it potential investors turn to other more attractive and politically transparent, accountable and predictable destinations than risk their investments in this country.

Thus while democratic countries in the region and beyond are attracting the cream of FDIs that are growing their economies the Kingdom of Eswatini’s economy is convulsing. Consequently, the only FDIs this country can attract are normally driven by shady characters who in turn make this country complicit to their criminal activities.

Essentially that is also how this country operates ostensibly because nothing, including the law and institutions, is sacrosanct under the Tinkhundla political system. Hence even the budget is a smokescreen to project a veneer of civility of a system – rooted in a class structured society of the dark ages of all powerful landowners and serfs in which a powerful minority has arrogated to itself the authority to think and decide what is good for the people in perpetuity - that can never be compatible with the rule of law.
In the end budgeting is an exercise in futility because in the end what the budget prescribes is all too often subordinated to the whims of those controlling the levers of power.