Last week, in commenting on the controversy that arose when the government sought to bulldoze three pieces of legislation (the Municipal and District Councils and Local Authorities (Amendment) Bill, the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism (Amendment) Bill and the Anti-Terrorism and Terrorist Related Activities Bill) through the National Assembly at one sitting and the government’s response that the PPP/C’s regime had acted similarly, I concluded by suggesting that the current government and its supporters would do best to reference their behaviour against regional and international best practices rather than past PPP/C behaviour.
With this in mind, although I will be covering some fairly familiar ground, this week I will attempt to give a few examples to indicate what route the government could take to develop greater participation in the law-making process.
As we have seen with the pre-2011 elections regimes, under Westminster rules, governments, particularly those with a large majority, rarely have trouble passing the laws they want. This has led some to argue that Westminster-type systems are no more than elective dictatorships. Yet, if the intention is to broaden participation in the legislative process both outside and inside the formal system of law-making, there are impressive possibilities.
Firstly, laws are initiated by many actors e.g. governments, political parties, trade unions, business associations, NGOs, etc. Since the national parliament is the only legitimate authority to make rules with national reach and the government dominates the legislative process, to be sure of success these organisations must get the government to adopt their legislative proposals.
But to gain the government support, rather than only vaguely verbalising their legislative request and leaving it to the government to do the actual conceptualising and documentation, these organisations could be required to provide the government with a position paper that has been extensively discussed among its membership. It is well known that oligarchies tend to control these organisations and by providing opportunities for internal democratic participation, this request could also help to democratize the organisations by leveraging participatory interventions.
Secondly, in so far as the formal structure is concerned, a good starting place is for us to understand that while unplanned legislation cannot be avoided, ideally at the start of each parliamentary year the government should give the populace some idea of its parliamentary agenda for that year. This will put all stakeholders on high alert, allowing them to consult their membership and be prepared to make informed interventions at the relevant time.
I recall that the PPP/C cabinet occasionally sought to institutionalise this approach, which was also taken up by the Parliamentary Management Committee, but so far as I am aware, the process has not been properly embedded.
Thirdly, to encourage wider public participation and encourage the populace to buy into the specific and general processes of governance, long before a law is taken to the National Assembly, the government may consider publishing and liberally circulating Green and/or White Papers. The former is a concept document to encourage broad discussion and the latter also gives the government’s position on the issue.
It is also considered good practice to publish draft legislation long before it reaches parliament. This allows both the public and opposition to have a good appreciation of what to expect. This is the approach that I adopted in relation to most of the bills that were passed in the early PPP/C regime and mentioned in last week’s column.
Fourthly, there is a common belief that by encouraging a strident competitive relationship between government and opposition, Westminster-type political systems are too divisive, and this is thought to be particularly so in our ethnically divided society. In column after column, I have voiced my concerns with the Westminster-type system in our context, but not with the specific issue of law making.
A fairer assessment of the Westminster process is that it has evolved to facilitate the government governing and the opposition opposing without their compromising the national interest. In my opinion, to a significant extent it is the application of the system without a nuanced understanding of the purposes of its institutions that highlights its more divisive aspects.
For example, a bill goes through three readings and committee and reporting stages. All of these stages are interlinked to facilitate both political competition and integration. On the first reading the bill is merely put before the House and in some jurisdictions it is not even in a printed format at this stage (www.historylearningsite.co.uk/).
The second reading is important, for quite apart from any specific issues the opposition may have with a bill, it creates a space for it to make its political play to the public – projecting itself as a competent alternative. This is the heart of the competitive element of the Westminster system. At this stage, the emphasis of the debate should be upon the merits of the bill and the opposition is given good opportunity to do its work and oppose. In the full glare of the media it can lambaste the government by showing the public why the bill, in whole or part, is unnecessary, is dangerous to the public welfare and is brought to the House by an incompetent government.
Of course, it is generally understood that the government has a mandate from the people to rule and will robustly defend itself and use its parliamentary majority to win the day. When, for whatever reason, this mandate is in question the entire process operates sub-optimally.
That said, just as the second reading emphasises competition, the committee stage is about consensus. Apart from committees of the whole House, committees are comprised of interested and expert government and opposition MPs in proportion to their numerical standing in the House. A committee can also call upon outside interested and expert advice.
But notwithstanding what the opposition may feel about the bill, it is understood that the committee stage provides an opportunity not to oppose the government as such but for all sides to go through the bill clause by clause to make the best law in the national interest.
When complicated bills are brought to parliament without proper stakeholder notice, with insufficient time provided to MPs and the entire process is collapsed into a few hours, it is no wonder that the competitive and divisive aspects of the system dominate.
The current government needs to become more proactive in establishing a participatory democratic regime or the divisive elements in the society will become even stronger.
