RATING APP SUGGESTS PANELLISTS CABINET CANDIDATES

MBABANE – Could the Sibaya app have given an idea on who the new Cabinet ministers might be?

In fact, the rating app for the Sibaya panellists suggests these are persons earmarked for the vacant Cabinet positions. The app, which was launched by the Royal Science and Technology Park (RSTP), started working on Saturday, after having been announced by the Sibaya moderator and Attorney General (AG) Sifiso Mashampu Khumalo.

Submissions

The app allows users to rate the submissions made by the Sibaya panellists when responding to questions given to them by Khumalo, with number one being the least rating each speaker could be rated on and six being the maximum. The title of the app says ‘PM/Cabinet position rating’, giving the impression that the panellists could be appointed by His Majesty King Mswati III as the new prime minister (PM) of the country and some of the other panellists would be Cabinet members. All 22 panellists who have so far made their submissions at Sibaya have been inducted in the rating app and Khumalo explained that the ratings would be used to determine how the masses reacted to the submissions by the panellists. The panellists, who include the last PM Cleopas Dlamini and former PM Themba Dlamini, were given different topics and asked how they would have handled them if they were the head of government or in Cabinet.

The topics included the political unrest experienced in 2021, patriotism in the context of Monarchical Democracy, how to produce industry-ready graduates and how to reduce Eswatini’s over-reliance on SACU, among other topics and questions they were submitting on. Sibaya has been ongoing for the past week, having been officially opened by His Majesty King Mswati III on Monday last week.  The anticipation, as observed in the past, is that the King will appoint the PM on the last day, who will then advise him on the appointment of the Cabinet ministers. 

However, it should be noted that the Swaziland Liberation Movement (SWALIMO) has condemned in the strongest terms, the introduction of the application which allows citizens to rate the panellists who were hand-picked to make presentation during the ongoing Sibaya dialogue. SWALIMO spokesperson Thantaza Silolo said the nation had never been formally introduced to this new process and it was not known what it sought to achieve or if indeed it had a binding effect. He submitted that it was suspected that the application was vulnerable to rigging as fraud could easily take place and no audit would be ensured thereafter.

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