Fafen for orientation of MPs regarding Rules of Business: report on National Assembly performance launched

Critical is the grasp on law making to optimise the performance of the National Assembly not through investment in broader areas limited to, record-keeping, public access to the record, legislative tracking, monitoring progress but executive assurances to the assembly along with orientation of Members in Rules of Business is vital to run the House effectively.
These are the observations of Free and Fair Election Network (Fafen) in its report appraising the performance of the second year of the 13th National Assembly launched here on Tuesday. Addressing on this occasion, Deputy Speaker National Assembly Faisal Kareem Kundi said that government was taking measures to improve and upgrade secretariat and parliament procedures not only to run the House business in a befitting manner but also to impart timely and correct information to the masses.
He said that the government was working to give permanence to the democratic institutions. An ethic committee would be constituted to run the proceedings of the parliament in a befitting manner. Similarly official e-mail address would be given to every parliamentarian that they might be easily reached and could respond to the masses in a better way.
Faisal further said that the government had already upgraded the Parliament Secretariat. He said that there should be live coverage of the standing committees' proceedings, which are the backbone of a parliament except of sensitive issues. Fafen Parliament monitor covered the performance of the Lower House from March 15, 2009 to April 2, 2010. The tools employed for performance assessment were: criterion, transparency, participation, responsiveness, output and institutionalisation.
According to the monitor report, the National Assembly held 79 sittings grouped in 12 sessions during the reporting period, remaining almost 243 hours in session, an average of 3 hours and 4 minutes per sitting. Each sitting started late by an average of 48 minutes while the proceedings remained suspended for almost 28 hours due to breaks on account of prayers, food, etc.
The House passed 33 of a total of 129 bills that appeared on the Orders of the Day, implying 25 percent achievement rate in this major form of parliamentary output. Twenty-eight Government bills and five Private Members' Bills were passed during the year. One-third (10) of the passed legislations were related to economy, three to legal affairs, two each to education, electoral and representation matters and women rights and one each to energy, defence, natural calamities, technology, health, public policy, engineering, agriculture and employment, indicating that the assembly addressed a broad array of legislative areas.
Fafen recommended that NA sittings should be open to citizen observers who should be given accreditation through a standardised process. It should help the constituents to assess the performance of their elected representatives. Complete information (and relevant documents) about NA business should be available to all the members, especially regarding the progress of legislation and other key policy decision-making processes.
Transcripts of all substantive discussion in the NA on policy matters, especially debates on legislation should be available on the NA website immediately after the session. No vote should be allowed by the NA Speaker, especially on legislation, without meeting the requirement of quorum. Efforts should be made to understand and address why approximately one-fourth of the members did not participate actively in the sessions.
Additional orientation and training for the MNAs is needed regarding their fundamental responsibilities especially to their constituents as well as basic parliamentary procedures, particularly those that are commonly misused, such as Points of Order.