Africa-Press – Eswatini. “The law will take its course should we discover that candidates used funds they did not declare.”
These were sentiments shared by the Elections and Boundaries Commission (EBC) Spokesperson, Mbonisi Bhembe, when responding to allegations that the elections were commercialised and marred by bribery. He said the Elections and Expenses Act gave EBC the power to deal with offenders, whether they won or lost the elections. According to Bhembe, the law allowed for campaigning, but candidates had to declare, adding that the limit for candidates was around E100 000. He stated that they were yet to conduct an assessment of the candidates’ accounts. The spokesperson said declaring of funds was meant to prevent money laundering.
Bhembe urged people to thoroughly asses the voters roll in order to weed out those people who did not belong to the constituency. He said people should take part in validating the voters roll in the future. Bhembe said EBC also went to the extent of engaging community leaders to participate in the exercise with the sole purpose of avoiding such problems. He said there were things that they could not avoid as EBC, which included decentralising registration vis-a-vis people registering at their chiefdoms, which could be tantamount to not facilitating free and fair elections. Currently, he said they were trying to devise a strategy for electronic voting (E-voting) to allow people to vote at their convenience.
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