AG ADVISES AGAINST LIDLOKOLO CONTINUATION

MBABANE – Government’s principal legal advisor has spoken and the ball is now in the administration’s court in as far as the construction of lidlokolo is concerned.

Attorney General Sifiso Mashampu Khumalo has reportedly advised government that the late former Prime Minister, Sibusiso Barnabas Dlamini, was not entitled to be built a retirement house at the time of his death.

According to senior political sources, the AG’s legal opinion is that Dlamini died while he was technically still in office and, therefore, clause 5.3 of Finance Circular No2 of 2013 had not yet been triggered.    

The clause, titled ‘housing’, reads: “The State shall provide a house for the prime minister at the end of his term of office. The house shall belong to the prime minister whether built on nation land or title deed property.”
The former PM died on September 28, 2018, with his last day in office being September 4, 2018 when His Majesty King Mswati III dissolved the Cabinet of the 10th Parliament

The King had dissolved Parliament on June 30.
“The attorney general has advised that even though Cabinet was dissolved on September 4, the late former prime minister was still considered to be in office because he was still on government payroll and no new Parliament was in place. In fact it was not just the deceased who was considered to be still in office, but all politicians elected or appointed into the 10th Parliament,” said the senior politician.

Indeed, as previously reported by this publication, documents show that the ex-PM’s salary and that of the rest of the politicians of the 10th Parliament was stopped on November 1, 2018, which means October was their last month on government’s payroll.

“So, the attorney general is saying the deceased was technically still a Member of Parliament when he died,” stated the senior politician.Secondly, according to the higher-ranking source, the AG has opined that there was further no need for the construction of the retirement house because the person it would have been intended for is deceased.

opinion directed to govt

“The premise of the attorney general is that this clause was made to protect the dignity of retired prime ministers, so that they are able to maintain a certain standard after their political life and therefore whose dignity will it protect now if it were to be built. He is saying this benefit was not in honour of a deceased former prime minister’s estate, but was intended for a living one,” continued the senior source.

When the AG was contacted, he said he could neither deny nor confirm the contents of the legal opinion he had given to government.
“My opinion is directed to my clients, so there is a client-lawyer confidentiality agreement. I am therefore not at liberty to divulge the opinion. I can’t override that confidentiality,” he said.

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