Playing politics when all is falling apart

Could it be that Senate was playing political brinkmanship with the House of Assembly over the Cabinet land-grab self-empowerment scandal?

 For the sake of this country, I hope this was not so and that Senators did not merely reverse the decision to return the land back to the Crown just so they can claim lost political ground. After all, when the matter of the Cabinet land-grab came to the fore there was a deafening silence from the upper House of Senate. Whether this was by design or omission borne of political expediency or incompetency, is a matter for conjecture.

As I see it, Senate’s action, albeit a little belated, seems to have been meant to checkmate the lower House of Assembly, which had instituted an investigation through a select committee into how six Cabinet ministers grabbed land in Mbabane at highly discounted rates, to claim lost political ground. The paradox of the whole mess, however, being that Senate had seemingly condoned the actions of the ministers involved in the whole scandal by allowing the Prime Minister, Sibusiso Barnabas Dlamini to table a report in complete disdain of the ongoing investigation by the Assembly Select Committee. Indeed, at one time it appeared as if the whole exercise was aimed at shooting down and undermining the House of Assembly’s investigation by giving an audience to the PM. With talks of a possible Cabinet reshuffle doing the rounds towards the end of last year followed by the PM’s reported interviews with individual lawmakers, it was largely believed that this exercise was meant to divide the legislature over possible promises of consideration for appointment into Cabinet. If this apparently diabolical plot worked, it did so temporarily on the Senators until after the PM’s failed attempt to justify himself and his Cabinet for grabbing state land at highly discounted rates. But the salient question is; could this act of apparent betrayal by some Cabinet ministers be undone by merely restoring the land they had allocated to themselves back to where it belongs?

Better still, can it be quantified as fitting punishment, if indeed it is punishment? And if it is punishment, does it fit the crime? Well, in the eyes of the Senators, restoring the land back to the state seems to be sufficient and a solution to the problem of Cabinet’s making. But will Members of Parliament in the House of Assembly be acquiescent to this, of course depending on whether the select committee finds any wrongdoing on their part, or will they also try to outdo Senate?

As I see it, and viewed from the perspective of a catalogue of injudicious decisions by the Cabinet since it came to power, both the Houses of Assembly and Senate are incapable of meting out the befitting punishment, which happens to be the ultimate sanction and that is a vote of no confidence on the Cabinet.

This is precisely because the lawmakers are fearful that such an action could be dangerous since it could lead to the dissolution of Parliament and early elections, which could deprive many lawmakers, a majority of which are neck-deep in debt, of a livelihood.

So, like all other commissions of inquiry, even the Assembly’s investigation will pass as one of many time-wasting and money-draining exercises incapable of delivering anything substantial in the end. Self-preservation is, after all, uppermost in the minds of the legislators in everything they do because the people they purport to represent do not matter at all.

And that is the Swazi polity for you!

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