Parliament 2008: Hot air, motions and emotions

A GLANCE at the National Assembly’s website over the weekend encapsulates more than the sum total of its parts: ‘The National Assembly is in recess …’ heralds a scroll bar across the main page, which lists order papers and minutes until April 2008. The last sitting was on November 27.

No mention is made of the Speaker, Theo-Ben Gurirab, being elected as president of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) shortly before the recess, a prestigious achievement for a small country like Namibia. Gurirab was the only candidate from Africa.
Not a single State of the Nation address by President Hifikepunye Pohamba, or his opening of Parliament addresses, are available online. The only one that can be found is that of former President Sam Nujoma of 2003.
Looking back on the National Assembly’s work of 2008 one could summarise it by saying ‘lots of motions, emotions and hot air’.
On at least four occasions there were not enough MPs to form a quorum and the sessions had to be abandoned. Of the 78 MPs in the Chamber, six are appointed by the Head of State, leaving 72 with voting rights and half of them plus one – 37 voting members – must be present to form a quorum.
Dozens of motions by opposition MPs and a few ruling Swapo Party backbenchers were tabled and debated – sometimes endlessly – without the rule applied that Members should only speak for a certain amount of time.
Motions tabled varied from ‘… that this Assembly debates to allocate more funds to strengthen the security of the country so that every roadblock in Namibia has shade against the sun and rain with modern toilets’, to providing ‘bulls, rams and tractors’ to the six northern regions and on education, poverty and youth empowerment, to mention a few.
Several motions were not discussed by November 27 and as a result will lapse. Better time management by the Speaker’s desk could have avoided that.

BILLS

As The Namibian wrote on October 1, the National Assembly turned into a Swapo rally – yet again – when that party’s MPs ululated and celebrated Swapo’s victory in the municipal elections at Omuthiya at the end of September.
Of about 17 bills that the National Assembly Secretariat announced in February on its website that might be tabled during 2008, only a third made it into the Chamber. These were the Appropriation Bill for the National Budget, the Plant Quarantine Bill, Sectional Titles Bill, an amendment to the existing mining law, which will enable Government to charge extra royalties from the mining sector, the National Youth Council Bill and the Controlled Wildlife Products and Trade Bill, the Road Traffic and Transport Amendment Bill and some technical amendments to the law on vocational training.
All of them were passed and referred to the National Council for review.
While the lack of bills coming to Parliament during 2008 cannot be blamed on the MPs, one wonders what the relevant Ministries, who are all represented in the National Assembly by the Ministers and their deputies, and the Office of the Attorney General have been doing about this.
The following draft bills did not make it to Parliament during 2008: Public Office-Bearers (Remuneration and Benefit) Commission Amendment Bill, Namibia Board of Trade Bill, Legal Practitioners Amendment Bill, Architectural and Quantity Surveying Bill, Chemical Weapons Convention Bill, Namibian Constitution Second Amendment Bill, National Planning and Construction Industry Council Bill, State Finance Bill, Industrial Property Bill and the Anti-Terrorism Bill. A bill to amend the Constitution also did not make it.
If the above drafts and others that are possibly also in the pipeline, like important amendments to the Electoral Act, which was supposed to have gone to the House this year, all reach Parliament next year, the fifth and last year of this Fourth Parliament, it will be a huge rush again passing all the drafts, as was witnessed in 2004.

MANY TRIPS

Members again had many opportunities to go on official trips this year, ranging from China to Switzerland, Barbados, Zimbabwe and the Democratic Republic of Congo, to mention just a few.
However, reports on such trips generally only make it to the House several months if not a year afterwards and then gather dust on the desks of MPs.
Few local trips were made; the same goes for the hearings of Parliamentary standing committees. Top marks go to the Committee on Public Accounts, which was – in the view of the press and the public – once again the most active.
Sadly, the National Assembly lost three Members – Kala Gertze of CoD, Local and Regional Government Minister John Pandeni and Deputy Safety and Security Minister Gabes Shihepo.
Safety and Security Minister Peter Tshirumbu-Tsheehama resigned. During a Cabinet reshuffle in April, former Agriculture Minister Dr Nickey Iyambo was moved to Safety and Security and former Lands Minister Jerry Ekandjo filled the late Pandeni’s position.
The top administrative post in the National Assembly Secretariat also became vacant during the last few weeks of this year. Nama Goabab was told to leave after not even two years in the post. He was facing two charges, one of allegedly using an official car without authorisation and another for being found under a bridge in a car, apparently under the influence.
A legal wrangle developed between two factions of the official opposition party CoD after one faction took the other to court after a controversial leadership election in May 2007.
State funding for parties represented in Parliament became a second bone of contention among the two CoD factions, as both scrambled for the bi-monthly cheques and claimed to be the rightful and authorised leaders.
A court victory for the CoD rebel faction and the judge’s order to hold another congress this year, which was done, ended the mother of all inner-party struggles Namibia’s political stage had ever seen.
May political maturity and more substantive debates prevail in 2009 – election year – in the National Assembly.