Thato Sibolla

When the Ombudsman is locked out, it is not the Ombudsman alone who suffers. The ordinary Mosotho loses an avenue of justice, Parliament loses an important watchdog, and constitutional democracy is weakened.

The fundamental questions are therefore: Who is holding the Executive accountable? Who is protecting the Ombudsman institution? And where is Parliament?

The Ombudsman Crisis is a Constitutional Crisis:

• Executive overreach: The Executive appears to be interfering with an independent constitutional accountability institution. The Ombudsman’s Office is not a department of the Ministry of Law and Justice and should not be subject to ministerial direction or control.
• Weakening of accountability: The Ombudsman exists to hold government accountable. If the Executive can prevent the Ombudsman from functioning, the very institution designed to scrutinise executive power is being weakened.
• Justice denied to Basotho: The Ombudsman’s absence has direct consequences for ordinary citizens. Investigators can investigate and prepare reports, but only the Ombudsman has the authority to determine complaints and decide the institutional way forward. There is no Deputy Ombudsman with equivalent powers to fill the gap. This means complaints and investigations requiring determination cannot be fully concluded.
• A deliberate institutional vacuum: The Office has effectively been operating without its Ombudsman for about three months. If judgment comes in November or December, the vacuum could extend to five or six months. The question is: why should Basotho be denied access to administrative justice while the constitutional dispute is pending?
• Parliament’s silence: The Ombudsman is an important part of Parliament’s accountability architecture; a watchdog over the Executive. Yet Parliament has remained largely silent while its watchdog is prevented from functioning. Why is Parliament not defending the independence of an institution that serves the public and Parliament itself? Why babipetsanefela and keeping mum??? Something is horribly wrong here!
• Rule of law: Where there is a court order protecting the functioning of the Ombudsman, compliance should not depend on further litigation. The issue is bigger than contempt proceeding; it concerns whether government respects binding judicial decisions and constitutional limits on executive power.
• International concern: This should no longer be treated merely as a dispute concerning one officeholder. It is an institutional-independence issue that warrants attention from Ombudsman institutions internationally and other regional and international human-rights bodies.

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