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A SAFTER THOUGHTS GUESTWRITER
we wait in bated breath for Minister of Finance Neal Rijkenberg to deliver the Budget Speech for the current year tomorrow, a number of things occupy my mind. I am not totally privy to all the stakeholders that government finds germane to involve in the process of putting together the Appropriation Bill.
I do think though, that in the process of being more democratic and transparent, any government would want to ensure that this process is as consultative and open as possible. All sectors of society, as extensive as possible, should have a fair opportunity to influence, to some degree, how the public kitty should be spent.
That Parliament, considered to be the people’s voice, in exercise of its oversight role over the Executive arm of government, has an opportunity to interface with and influence, to some extent, the direction of government budgetary priorities, is not enough, in my view, to endorse solid legitimacy to public ownership of the budget.
Fundamental
Events in the past have also shown how limited Parliament is in making fundamental changes in the Bill. The intentions of the Executive, almost invariably, will hold sway.
We need this process to be open to civil society, in all its diversity; youth, pressure groups, people with disabilities, business, the church and ordinary citizens.
The trend over the years has been for some organised civil society groups to create platforms that are only but reactionary and speak to how the budget should have been. The space that needs to be contested should be the technical space which begins months before the budget speech is delivered.
That space, regrettably, seems to be kept for the exclusive preserve of the government technocrats who put the budget together. Capacity issues, perhaps, inform this and that is why we need civil society organisations to invest heavily in developing capacity in this area so that it is able to meaningfully participate in this process and provide input that gives a solid voice to the interests of the voiceless masses they purport to represent, beyond vapid sloganeering.
The battle for the interests of the poor and marginalised begins in how as a country we choose to distribute our resources.
Upgrades
If our priorities, as reflected in our budget, lean towards vanity projects that have no immediate benefit for the country; show fixation to security and military upgrades and parasitic institutions; demonstrate expensive tastes that would leave First World countries green with envy, then that is where we begin to lose the battle. At that point, the poor continue to take a backseat and their numbers swell. The gap between the haves and have nots widens even more and we think we can deal with the concomitant social ills such as crime and gender-based violence through law-enforcement.
Government should ensure that other non-State actors are fully capacitated and participate in all stages of the budgetary process so that it enjoys mass ownership. At orientation, I have little confidence that parliamentarians are capacitated to understand the budgetary process enough for
the citizenry to have faith that as the gatekeepers, they can do a satisfactory job at critiquing it to reflect the interests of their constituents.
This is the last budget for this 11th Parliament and many of parliamentarians are still at sea as concerns this process. Having gone through a financial year where we have witnessed glaring gaps in service delivery, especially in the health care sector and maintenance of road infrastructure, one can only appeal to the parliamentarians to remember the situation back in their constituencies.
This budget presents the last opportunity for them to redeem themselves. As they debate this budget, they should the casualties they suffered in the three MPs who have not been be able to finish their term of office because of exercising they democratic duty of expressing the views of their constituents. Let posterity judge them kindly for standing for the truth and being biased towards the poor and oppressed.
Vigorously
We are counting on Parliament to vigorously oppose any moves by the Executive to turn to the poor emaSwati, in the form of increased taxes, in order to fund the budget.
If anything, we expect to see relief for the people who have been most hard hit by the economic turmoil that has suffered massively form internal and external shocks. We implore the parliamentarians not to acquiesce to any fundamental hikes in consumption taxes.
With more enforcement of compliance within the current tax base, more prudent spending and clamping down on corruption, we should be able to steer the country out of this difficult phase.
Parliament should push for a budget that puts money back into people’s pockets, creates jobs and offers some measure of relief to the unemployed and generally poor. With an anticipated increase in Southern African Customes Union (SACU) receipts, surely more can be done for emaSwati this year.