THE main objectives of Commonwealth include ensuring that democracy, freedom of expression, freedom of assembly and basic human rights are adhered to by member states. Most Club members are on the correct track in this aspect but others face monumental tasks.
Our Staff Writer, ICHIKAELI MARO, talked to the Secretary General of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (CPA), Dr Shija, in Perth, Australia, recently on the political and economic climates that prevail in member countries and what the CPA is doing about it. Exerpts...
QUESTION: Briefly, tell us your experiences as being the Secretary General of the Commonwealth whose major objective is to maintain democracy, freedom of expression, assembly and observation of the basic human rights.
ANSWER: Firstly I would like to send heartfelt greetings to my fellow Tanzanians, especially my President, Mr Jakaya Kikwete, whom I had opportunity to greet here (at Perth in Australia), when he came to participate in the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM).
Secondly, I would also like to thank God who enabled me to be given the opportunity to be the Secretary General of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (CPA), since January 2007.
It is true that we have about 180 Parliaments throughout Commonwealth member nations; we have 17,000 parliamentarians from big and small countries that are members of the Commonwealth.
Our members from the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (CPA) come from national parliaments, constitutional parliaments -- House of Lord and House of Commons, in other words they are known as Senates and House of Representatives.
When I was appointed CPA Secretary General it is true that I had to continue implementing three principles: It is important to keep regulations that are applicable in the member countries of the Commonwealth whose major objective is to maintain democracy, freedom of expression, assembly and observation of the basic human rights.
The principles are guided by the Rule of Law - known as Latino House Principles -- that separate Central Government, Parliament and the Judiciary. In the Commonwealth, what we uphold as Secretary General of the CPA when I present progress report of the Association, I start with the announcement of Regulations and Principles of the CPA --Rule of Law which are generally embedded in the Commonwealth member nations.
Since I took over the position of the CPA Secretary General, also I ensured I keep the principles of our parliaments -- on what they are supposed to do and our major task is to assist parliamentarians within the Commonwealth member states to have the capacity, information and cooperation and to know their duties and responsibilities as parliamentarians.
Briefly we ensure capacity building of the Commonwealth parliamentarians. Capacity building means parliamentarians must know their duties once they are elected. He/she has to participate in enactment of laws that concern his/her citizens.
This is a very critical duty for the parliamentarian because laws are not just enacted with formation of policies that are acceptable by the citizens. Secondly, parliamentarians must make sure they supervise governments' budgets.
Government budgets allow for mandate to collect taxes from individuals and various production corporations. It is from taxes that governments are able to execute their duties of providing various services to their citizens.
Parliamentarians are also tasked with duties to supervise their electorates' developments in their respective constituents. And to assist the electorate in the constituents is a big responsibility on the part of parliamentarians because the electorate has many challenges that impact of their rights directly and others are a result of services that are supposed to be provided by their governments.
All these three areas are the ones that CPA deals with. CPA is doing several activities geared towards assisting parliamentarians in member states of the Commonwealth to execute their duties effectively.
Q: You seem to put emphasis on observation of democracy and rule of law within the Commonwealth. But we have witnessed growing unrest in several countries, especially in the Arab world that are within Commonwealth member states. Can you please comment on this?
A: It is true that poverty is a big issue. It is a big problem and we are saying if a country has resources both human and others which is properly preserved, it can assist to reduce or eliminate poverty.
Now this situation is achieved through establishment of proper policies that guide on how to tap the resources in a particular country and distribute them equitably. It is true there are conflicts in several countries within the Commonwealth, emanating from corruption, embezzlement of public funds, and destruction of property in general which creates shortage or minimal availability of services to the people.
Now if you can curb embezzlement and corruption, definitely you can do a lot in providing social services to the people. This is a big challenge in our countries because even in our general meeting to celebrate 100 years of CPA, this year, in London, UK, in my speech I said now the world is guided not only by regulation/guidelines on economy that you cannot have the economy that is guided on the principles of capitalism and feudalism.
Now we are faced with the challenges on how to run the economy on the basis of providing services to the people. This means, if you produce property in a country and if you do not distribute the accrued profit equitably, you will definitely face uprisings such as what has taken place in the Arab world and North of Africa.
Q: That has never happened in other parts of the world other than what you have just mentioned? We also witnessed this happening in the UK that people are now standing against capitalism. What does this mean?
A: The meaning is that, in this world, we have reached a stage where we need to look back and prepare a new world economic order. I think, the world is telling us, especially the young generation that one cannot run the economy solely on the basis of capitalism and succeed.
This must change so that other citizens can get the opportunity to benefit from the resources that are available within their proximity. This is exactly what happened in London. We have also witnessed same uprisings in the US even in South America (Mexico), Asia (India) --almost all over the world things are not okay.
For example, in Malaysia, there was a kind of demonstration from the citizens that they were not happy with the way the economy of their country was run. It is now a challenge of world leaders to rethink that the production system and distribution of the wealth must benefit all the people if peace is to prevail. You must give more opportunity on equitable distribution of wealth.
Let me give another example of how world leaders are faced with challenges. There are countries that produce oil. After my trip in Perth I am going straight to Ghana, West Africa, for a meeting where parliamentarians will look in how best they can ensure equitable distribution of wealth from the sale of oil, gas and production of various types of minerals in several countries.
What we are looking for is that we must have policies which show that citizens benefit from the natural resources available in respective countries. If we do not have that we should expect challenges as witnessed in several countries in the world. Therefore, policies and laws in member countries of the Commonwealth must address these issues.
It is no longer the time to embrace capitalist economy. Though people participate in production, they use machines but how many are benefiting from the wealth accrued from these productions? We have to look at these issues very seriously.
There must be equitable distribution of wealth. If we fail to distribute wealth in this formula, as it is the case in the world economy now, we will definitely get into problems.
Q: How is the CPA prepared to deal with the challenges currently experienced in several parts of the world, including the Commonwealth?
A: Firstly, we facilitate parliaments in the Commonwealth to be able to share information on the way in which policies have been developed in respective countries and if they can be replicated in other countries.
By sharing such information, we help parliamentarians to learn from best practices in policies formulation and enactment of laws.
We conduct several workshops on policies formulation and enactment of laws in order to assist parliamentarians to have knowledge, as well as learn from best practices by having examples of countries that have formed best policies and enacted laws that can be emulated by other countries on how best to equitably distribute wealth.
Let me take the example of Trinidad and Tobago, in the Caribbean. Trinidad and Tobago have demonstrated that they can get lots of resources out of oil and gas and how to distribute it equitably to its citizens.
I have also been told that several African countries have borrowed the example of Trinidad and Tobago on the best way to exploit the oil and natural gas resources and distribute it equitably to its citizens.
One of these countries is Ghana which recently discovered oil. They want to prepare a formula that ensures every citizen in Ghana benefits from the natural resource.
I think if such example can be developed on how policies and laws can be formulated to ensure the natural resources benefit the people, so our Parliaments can learn from this best example, and enact good laws that can help their citizens.
Q: In you experience as the Secretary General of the CPA, please tell us things that you can proudly say you have done and added value to the Association.
A: Firstly, what I remember is the emphasis that the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) have more challenges and needs than other countries such as Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. In these countries, their parliamentary systems have been there for a long time, thus, more experienced.
The former (ACP) have experience ranging between 40 and 50 years at most. Their systems are still young; therefore they need to strengthen their parliamentary and democratic systems.
Therefore, I have worked hard to make sure young countries, especially African countries, which have just established and built their democratic systems through workshops and communication between countries can share experiences on democracy building.
Secondly, we have standardization system on how parliaments in the Commonwealth should operate in building democracy. We call this 'Benchmarks for Democratic Legislatures'.
Under this benchmarks we have stated that young and upcoming parliaments must learn from more experienced parliaments (from the countries I mentioned above) to take what they think fits them and replicate them in their respective countries.
For example, there are systems on the best method to utilize Parliamentary Committees. These committees are very important in that they monitor the functions of governments in office, especially after endorsement of national budgets and their utilization in various development projects.
If there are well prepared and competent parliamentary committees in place, they can monitor and hold governments accountable on utilization of approved national budgets and collection of revenue. We have done well in this aspect. In African countries, this exercise was well successful in member countries of the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) in the implementation of these procedures.
We also collaborate with our colleagues in the SADC Parliamentary Forum so that we can incorporate more countries such as Angola, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) because Mozambique is already a member of CPA after being accepted to join the Commonwealth Club. But in Asia, Pacific and the Caribbean, procedures to uplift profiles of the parliaments we have already endorsed them and are now applicable as best practices.
I am very proud that I was instrumental in ensuring that these benchmarks are applicable in the operations of the Commonwealth parliaments during the four years that I have been the Secretary General of the CPA.
Thirdly, another thing that I am proud of within CPA under my leadership is strict control in the utilization of funds and other resources we get from our members. It is true there are recommendations on what must be done in the national chapters of the CPA, for example in Tanzania; they have to come from the chapters themselves. They have to tell us what their needs are and together to put up strategies to implement them.
We have so many demands and for the funds that we receive annually we have been using them carefully. I must emphasize here that the parliaments in the CPA have more needs because they are young, and we have been doing all what is possible to assist them.
Again, I want to proudly declare here that the utilization of funds have been excellent, we have no losses.
Q: In your four-year experience in the CPA, you mentioned only the success part of it, is there anything that you think did not work out to your expectations, any disappointments?
A: I can say there are several areas that we could do better. Firstly, in our endeavour to
support individual parliaments within the Commonwealth, we have not been very successful as we anticipated.
The main reason for this is decimal budget. If our budget was enough, we could serve some of these parliaments better. These include Mozambique, Malawi, Rwanda (which is the newest member of the Commonwealth).
There have been weaknesses in this area. It is my plan we will direct our efforts towards assisting these parliaments in the near future. Another area that we could have done better are relationships between parliaments within the Commonwealth.
For example, the Canadian parliament could have relations with several parliaments in Africa, Asia or in the Caribbean, so that the latter could benefit from these expertises. We have started this process in what we call 'Twinning process' but which could have been done better.
As an example, we have twinning process between the Parliament of Scotland and the Parliament of Malawi. The focus in this twinning is on support in capacity building and more cooperation on the parliamentary committees.
A third area which I think is weak is on the amount of money collected from members. If we could get more money from the members, we could have made strides in various areas in the Association particularly in the strengthening of the parliaments.
Another area that we have not been very successful is to encourage member nations of the Commonwealth to elect more women into their parliaments. It is true there are several countries that have made good progress in this area such as Rwanda by involving more women to participate in the leadership of their country through their parliament.
Tanzania and South Africa started well but they seem to be stagnant. They should do more. But there are countries whose women representation in their parliaments is only one to two per cent.
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