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DOES SWAZILAND HAVE AN ATTORNEY GENERAL?

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Sir,

As a person who sits around watching and reminiscing about things that happen in this beautiful country of ours, I tend to wonder as to whether we really have an AG in the country or not, or if we at least have what his modus operandi is?


At times I think he acts in the fashion of an ostrich that buries its head in the ground until a raging fire comes round.
Surely there are a number of things that really give me the jitters of being mystified as to how he really works, for whom and under what circumstances.


While wondering if my mysteries will all fit into the letter to the Editor I will go on and enumerate some of them as follows:

NON-CONFORMING STATUTES - Ever since we had the constitution in 2005, one had and still has the apprehension that it is the duty of the AG to be seeing to it that all the statutes that are non-conforming to the Constitution are abrogated and new conforming ones enacted.  
PARLIAMENT - In Parliament he is said to be an ex-officio member, which means in most material times when he is there he listens and watches the parliamentarians have their debates.


How often do we have non-conforming laws enacted in Parliament?
The worst part is when he is finally called in to advise as to the point of law in his capacity as AG, I wonder why he has to be called out instead of him being proactive.


At times even in his advice he becomes so confusing so much that one finds themselves at square one.
THE CHIEFS CASES - The constitution states clearly that there are only two people who can`t be taken to court, but recently it has appeared in the newspapers that the AG was intimating to promulgate his own law that chiefs must not be taken to court much as the rampant failure on his part to advise or stand in for them and their subjects on their thievery of farm lands.


THE HIGH COURT - The high court has on several occasions been frustrated by the issue of cases assigned to one officer from the AGs office.
The question is if the advisor frustrates other institutions to an extent that they finally complain who is to advise the advisor. 


AGOA, ILO AND E.U BENCHMARKS - Looking at these bench- marks one tends to wonder as to where the AG is hibernating to an extent that we finally lost the AGOA when all the benchmarks are enshrined in our own constitution, and our constitution further embraces all international treaties and conventions which we voluntarily ratified, meaning we will enact laws in conformity with them.


What commitment are we showing when people you expect to know and make sure everyone including themselves abide by the law and specifically the constitution call legally registered unions bolamlambo.
Even what is said to be done on a hurry-slow urgency seems to be far from gaining the AGOA we are crying out for and taking us out of the special paragraph.


Instead we might find ILO having lost patience with us after the un-ending promises to conform and finally find Swaziland punished severely by ILO.
We are right at the moment tittering on the brink of being sanctioned by the EU for the very same benchmarks.
In all this the beckoning question that always arises with me is where is the AG and when does he advise.


HIS RETIREMENT - I have always said, though newspapers at times don`t publish it, that anyone who needs their term of office extended after their retirement has come to the end of its buying date, is surely a failure and a selfish person in not being able to mentor a successor for all the years they have been in office.


That some more years have been added over his pensionable years is but an egg in the faces of his subordinates, that their brains are so daft so much that they could not be mentored to the standard of the incumbent AG, worst still for the Swazi nation who are still to stay with these calling issues yet we were hoping with the coming in of new blood there could be changes, though at all material times in our system of governance, we are so conservative in keeping all the things that bog us down and only progressive on glittering fiscal wasting agendas.

Joecking M. Dlamini

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