DISAPPOINTED IN OUR MPS

THE minister of Finance had it easy this year, with his budget passing with flying colours without any amendments, thanks to our honourable Members of Parliament (MPs). The fact of the matter is that the only time our MPs get to stand up for the general Eswatini populace is during February and March of each year, when it is time to pass the National Budget. Note that this is a very important exercise because it is probably the only time our MPs really have a say on how government gets to allocate the limited money the country has squeezed out of our pockets.

Be that as it may, our MPs seem not to understand or care enough about their real role in Parliament. The only thing they are good at is to go with the flow and they seem to never want to put their names on the line to stand up for what is right and just for real socioeconomic development to occur in this beloved Kingdom of Eswatini. The way they are so quick to rubber stamp anything shoved down their throats, I am tempted to think that they are either (1) too stunned by the eloquence of the minister of Finance as he delivered his speech and forgot that the devil lives in the details or (2) they are simply clueless about most of the issues tabled for the upcoming financial year, such that they are just too timid to form a cogent English sentence to challenge the key issues raised that will leave a lot of emaSwati economically worse off.

With the passing of this budget, the MPs should be prepared to nurture the stomach politics they get voted on in their constituencies. They should brace themselves as a majority of their constituents will require more financial assistance to pay for their children’s school fees, more food handouts, and more from the personal wallets of these MPs to sustain their livelihoods.

Economy

I mean the rate the country is going, seizing money from our personal incomes and taking from the little bit we get to spend on the economy, we will get to a point where it does not pay to wake up and go to work.
News flash to our MPs; your job is to ask the uncomfortable questions, to go into the details of the policies tabled by the country’s bureaucrats to ensure that emaSwati are protected from a government that wants to take our money to develop skyscrapers, among many other lavish money pits that end up benefiting a distinguished few while the majority of emaSwati turn to shylocks and the shadow economy to make ends meet.

Seriously, without being condescending to our MPs, there are a lot of points that needed serious debate in financing the G-wallet in this upcoming year, including how government should in turn spend the tabled E21.8 billion. There is continuous talk about hard decisions that need to be taken to lift government out of its financial ruins, yet all of these hard decisions and sacrifices seem to fall on the individual taxpayer, while government escapes scot-free from all the financial mess it has created out of the national accounts. We are being punished for government’s incompetence in balancing how much money comes in and out of the G-wallet, and our MPs are always ready to sign off on making sure that taxpayers get the short end of the stick.

What’s worse is that government never seems to appreciate that it is through the individuals in the economy who spend their hard earned money that government is in turn able to stand on a leg to blow the billions of Emalangeni each year on much questionable development projects. Without thinking twice, government is free to waste as much money as possible and perpetuate fiscal deficits because it always, without hesitation, comes back to the individual taxpayer to expropriate more money out of our personal pockets to fund the numerous money pits that make up Eswatini’s economy.

Indeed, with the passing of the 2019/20 Expropriation National Budget, of course our MPs will without a blink approve the Bills that will enable government to effect the proposed tax hikes, levies, and user-fees in the economy. For example, with the adoption of the Finance Bill and amendment of the Eswatini Revenue Act, the 36 per cent PAYE will come into effect, the fuel levy will increase our fuel bills, and the sin tax on alcohol and tobacco will also come into effect, among many other hikes.
If our MPs will not stand up to protect our needs as citizens of this country, who will then save us from this greedy and money-grabbing government?

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