Your Eye on Parliament

Evaluating the 9th Parliament: An Interview with Stephen Hippo Twebaze, Research Associate at the African Legislative Project
To provide some perspective on the performance of the 9th Parliament, Parliament Watch Uganda interviewed Mr. Stephen Hippo Twebaze, Research Associate at the African Legislative Project. Below is his analysis of trends in the 9th Parliament based on the extensive tracking done by the African Legislative Project from the 6th Parliament to the 9th Parliament. On the Productivity of Parliament: The current Parliament has a significant backlog of work, due to the slower pace of the legislative process and increasing amounts of plenary time spent on matters of national importance, which include issues not formally on the order paper, but raised by MPs with the permission of the Speaker. By a recent count, approximately 250 matters of national importance had been raised to date in the 9th Parliament compared to only 165 in the entire 8th Parliament. Matters of national importance are taking an increasing share of Parliamentary plenary time compared to legislative business and considering and adopting committee reports, but whether many issues being raised as matters of national importance actually deserve that status is questionable. There are also numerous petitions, for which it is difficult to find time in committees and on the Order Paper. The space devoted to matters of national importance and petitions has meant that the 9th Parliament has moved slowly in terms of legislative business. It has also delayed to respond to questions put to Ministersby the end of the 2nd session, out of the 63 questions put to Ministers, only 11 were answered. In general, both oversight and legislative business are suffering because they never get back to the floor of Parliament for formal deliberation. This has a particular impact on the accountability committees including the Public Accounts Committee and the Local Government Accounts Committee. Strengths of the 9th Parliament: Despite its challenges, the 9th Parliament has done an excellent job on budget scrutiny. Scrutiny of the previous years health budget forced government to make significant adjustments in its health, education and agriculture budgets. Within committees the contributions of MPs have been particularly effective in getting the government to appreciate concerns on the budget.

The 9th Parliament has also been more effective than any Parliament since the 6th in terms of getting ministers to resign for corruption, with Kabakumba Masiko and Syda Bbumba among the casualties. Parliament has also made an impact in terms of amending proposed legislation with certain bills like the Public Order Management undergoing change on a significant majority of the clauses. Other technical bills like the National Population Council Bill have witnessed very few amendments. In cases where significant technical expertise has supported parliamentarians to propose amendments, as in the case of ACODE on the oil bills, Parliament has been able to make valuable contributions. On bills where there is less civil society interest, and the subject matter is very technical, MPs ability to contribute has been limited. Major Challenges: What clearly is not working is sorting out the backlog of Auditor Generals reports, even though there is a lot of investment in accountability committee reports. You dont see that backlog being sorted out. You dont see the Human Rights Committee considering and disposing of Human Rights Committee reports to Parliament. And yet those reports contain a number of issues that require Parliamentary action. There is a question of how Parliament can prioritize the issues in these reports more effectively to insure that action is taken on the issues contain in the reports. Getting issues from committees to the plenary is a significant challenge. If the committee report on the valley dams in the 6th Parliament had not made it to the floor, former Vice President Kazibwe would not have been held accountable. To support the committees Parliamentary staff need to be deployed more efficiently, with many reports taking too long to be written, including one example where a committee spent almost a year without getting a draft of a report from a clerk, and another example where the Chair of the committee had to draft the reports. Committee processes are also delayed by MPs being distracted from their committee responsibilities by debts and other obligations.