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Internal Organization and Management – High Priority
Workshops participants considered internal organization and management the area in which
parliament needed the most – and most immediate – support in order to fulfill its tripartite
functions of representation, legislation and oversight. This decision was justified on the
grounds that the need for fundamental internal reform of the way in which parliament is led and
structured was a prerequisite to addressing other categories, in particular the building of
legislative and oversight capacity. In the words of one member of parliament, “God helps those
who help themselves, so we have to first put our house in order.” This sentiment was met with
widespread agreement, with participants understanding internal organization and management
to be a crucial building block to both houses undertaking their roles.
Parliamentary Procedures
The highest priority change in this category was reform of parliamentary procedures, which cut
across a number of sub-categories. It should be noted that there is a degree of overlap between
the changes identified in this category and what could be seen as being part of enabling
environment (specifically the legislative/constitutional framework sub-category) because many
of the changes proposed would often also entail changes to the constitution in terms of the way
in which parliament is structured.
Internal Regulation, Oversight and Democracy
The sub-category internal regulation, oversight and democracy
was well-covered in the
workshop discussion, with participants identifying a number of areas of key internal reform
which need to take place in order for there to be adequate internal democracy, horizontal
accountability and regulatory oversight both within parliament and between parliament and the
executive. Participants’ proposals for reform centered upon the House of Representatives due
to the affiliation of all the participants. There was a commonly-felt concern over the potential
politicization of the House of Representatives by the executive in terms of regular interference
with the affairs of the house, leading opposition members of parliament to suggest that the
house’s agenda be set by an ad hoc committee elected by the house as an attempt to insulate the
house’s agenda from executive influence.
A further proposal which emerged during the discussion was that committees need to have
greater technical capacity in order to guard against excessive politicization. Committees were
described by one participant as “very weak in knowledge” which meant that they did not have a
“different voice from the government of the time.” Participants also identified critical problems
within the committee structure and scrutiny process, with suggestions that membership of
committees was being used for political ends by the government. There was sharp criticism of
the speaker and his deputies for presiding over the marginalization of committee chairmen in
the appointment and removals process by bypassing chairmen when making decisions regarding
the membership of committees. This issue is bound up with the leadership and leadership
structure sub-category, with participants voicing similar concerns about what was deemed a
‘dictatorship by the speaker’ over members of parliament in the lower chamber.
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It was not established whether these problems were also present in the upper chamber.
