September 23, 2008	Tuesday	Ramazan 22, 1429

ISLAMABAD, Sept 22: Acting Speaker National Assembly Faisal Karim Kundi on Monday called upon all stakeholders including the citizens and civil society to join hands in efforts to strengthen the parliament.

He was speaking at the launching ceremony of the National Assembly component of “parliament watch project” of Free and Fair Election Network (Fafen) and Centre for Peace and Development Initiatives.

Under the project, detailed data about the processes within the National Assembly and the performance of its members will be collected through direct observation of legislative proceedings and the information will be shared with the public through periodic reports. The main objective of the project is to provide useful information to the electorates, legislators, political parties and other stakeholders. A similar exercise will be conducted by Fafen components in all the provincial assemblies and later the scope of the project would be extended to the Senate.

Mr Kundi stressed that strengthening parliament was not the job of parliamentarians or political parties alone. “We can only strengthen parliament when we have candid, objective and non-partisan analysis of its performance, highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of legislative procedures,” he remarked.

He said periodic reports about the performance of parliament would give a clearer picture of the performance of parliamentarians as individuals as well as that of the parliament as an institution. He said parliamentarians would learn and improve the quality of their contributions on the basis of the findings of the reports. He said it would be very important that the feedback given by the reports is integrated into the institutional learning process of both houses of the parliament. PPP spokesman and former senator Farhatullah Babar termed the project highly important, adding there was no institutional mechanism available to monitor the performance of the legislative bodies.

He said the performance of the legislators had to be watched in contrast with their salaries, perks and privileges including medical bills and foreign tours. Without naming any individual, he said there had been instances where elected representatives did not utter even a single word in the house for three years.

On the other hand, he added, there were members who strived hard to raise issues of public interest on the floor of the house in the shape of resolutions, motions and calling attention notices but the same were killed in chamber by the presiding officers saying that this would impinge upon the national security. Citing an instance, he said a member pointed out that the government officials provided details of their assets to heads of their departments while the parliamentarians submit the lists of their assets and liabilities to the Election Commission. He sought to know if the armed forces officers also submitted the lists of their assets, but the same was killed in chamber by the presiding officer on the pretext of national security. He said it was essential that the performance of the presiding officers is also watched.

He said the scope of the project should be extended to the legislative assemblies of Azad Kashmir and the Northern Areas.

Chief Whip of PML-Q in the National Assembly Riaz Hussain Pirzada termed accountability a prerequisite for the success of political system. He said a culture should be developed wherein the ministers resign accepting their failures.

Members of the National Assembly Tahira Aurengzeb and Malik Shakir promised their fullest cooperation to the project.