Parliament is planning major reforms that, if approved, could overhaul how the lower chamber’s committees go about their daily business, The New Times can exclusively reveal. The reforms, whose process was approved by the plenary sitting of the Chamber of Deputies late last year, are expected to boost the House’s oversight roles, especially in reviewing, monitoring, and supervision of government programs and policy implementation. A source from Parliament who preferred anonymity told this newspaper that, besides aiming for better service delivery, the Lower House was seeking changes following a call by President Paul Kagame to push for more from government in terms of accountability. Presiding over the swearing in ceremony of the 4th Parliament in September 2018, Kagame urged the lawmakers to live up to their mandate of keeping government in check and to strengthen their oversight function to ensure accountability for public resources. “We expect you to hold government accountable for doing their job of serving citizens and delivering development. Now that you have been elected, remain close to citizens, serve them and deliver on the promises you made,” he said. Greater oversight capacity Under the changes, the lower chamber seeks to give more powers to parliamentary standing committees which will in turn contribute to improve how reviews of government programmes and policy implementation are done. For instance, the reforms seek to give committees the powers to review government activities, with government institutions being summoned by commissions and not necessarily the plenary sessions. Commenting on the proposal, MP Frank Habineza said that he was fully supportive of the reforms, mostly because they will allow lawmakers to work better. Habineza explained that the reforms mean that oversight activities will start within all committees, a privilege that was previously left to the Public Accounts Committee (PAC). This means that the committees will have the power to summon public institutions for public hearings regarding reports by the Auditor General, Ombudsman, Rwanda Governance Board (RGB), Public Service Commission (PSC) CNLG among others. “This means that committees can now summon a minister at any minute which is a big opportunity since these officials only appear in committees to answer questions after we have been to field visits or after a report has been released,” he said. Under the new reforms, institutions will only be summoned to the plenary where the relevant committee feels necessary. Better connection with people The reforms will also create better connection between the lower chamber and the people it serves. In this case, the reforms seek to introduce ‘preventive oversight’, which will help the parliament to avoid doing reviews or oversight when mistakes have already been made. This way, parliamentary committees will be knowing what is exactly happening on the ground when it comes to government activities. Habineza said that, once the reforms are gazetted, an MP will be allowed to table a motion before plenary and, thereafter, institutions in charge summoned to explain and then solve it. Currently, an MP can only table before parliament written ideas, questions or problems from the electorate and not from an individual legislator. The team selected to produce reform guidelines and models started this activity yesterday in Rubavu district and will conclude on January 25. Efforts to contact MP Edda Mukabagwiza, the Deputy Speaker in charge of legislation and government oversight were futile by press time.
