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Statement of Mr. Magdy Martinez-Soliman
Executive Head a.i.of the United Nations Democracy Fund (UNDEF)
at the International Conference on Effective Legislative-Executive Relationships
Kabul, Afghanistan
Jointly organized byThe National Assembly of Afghanistan and The SEAL Project, UNDP Afghanistan in cooperation with The Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU)

1. Opening Statement: I would like to thank the United Nations and UNDP, the SEAL project and the friends and colleagues who provide their support and technical expertise to the Afghani experts and practitioners, MPs and parliament service professionals. I am deeply honoured to have been invited - I guess somewhere in the middle of the road and of my time as one of the persons responsible for the UNDP policy on democratic governance and as the recently appointed Executive Head, ad interim, of the new UN Democracy Fund.

2. Today, Afghanistan is serving as an important model and the Afghan parliament, in particular, for the important role that representative institutions play in the social reconstruction of the country. What the Afghan legislature may not be aware of is the extent to which this experience is inspirational for other post conflict countries as far away as Sierra Leone, Liberia, Haiti or Ecuador, who are now looking at how to rapidly support the parliament so that it can play its role in the aftermath of important post conflict elections.

3. Democratic Governance is synonymous with peaceful conflict management. Legitimate and representative governance - that is effective, based on the rule of law and respecting people's fundamental rights and freedoms - is in itself the most effective means for societies to prevent, manage and recover from conflict. Parliaments like yours manage every day conflict in the political space. This has an enormous value for your citizens, as you are avoiding violent conflict at every step. Like King Boabdil who cried bitterly in the outskirts of his lost city Granada, one of the ,most beautiful of the Muslim heritage in my country, we only know of the value of what we had once we have lost it, and as there is nothing more beautiful than what we never had, there is nothing more bitter than what we have let go astray. We are generally unaware of Parliaments' contributions to a peaceful coexistence in our societies, unless and until they fail: then we miss their vehement debates, their heated deliberations and their scenic geography. All these contribute to keeping the peace, as do healthy and balanced relationships between a Legislature and the Government that is accountable to it.

4. Next week I will be traveling to an international conference organized by UNDP in Brussels. That conference is specifically devoted to, and will argue for, recognition of the vital role of representative institutions in political reconstruction. There, I will have the good fortune to learn more about the Afghan experience from the current Second Deputy Chairwoman of the Wolesi Jirga, Ms. Fawzia Koofi.

5. At that conference, UNDP will be calling upon the international community to commit itself to a set of Guidelines recognizing the vital role parliaments play in crises prevention and recovery, including:

a. Oversight of reconstruction - a vital issue given the enormous hopes and no smaller public monies at stake

b. Legislating human rights guarantees - the whole reconciliation and justice package

c. And addressing post conflict security issues - another issue where heavily armed post-conflict societies have looked into reasserting civilian authority - especially the Parliament's - over all armed forces, bodies and institutions

6. And this brings me to the topic at hand. Parliaments are the representative branch of the governing structure, but their interaction with all other state organs is fundamental to their ability to be effective in their work. And the first duty for a Parliament to legitimately exercise oversight over a Government that has been elected is, of course, to closely represent interests of the people. Parliaments who stay entrenched in the capital city, whose members mind their business but not that of the villages, whose MPs don't interact with citizens except to request their vote, four or five years later, can be easily ridiculed and ignored by a strong and astute government. Parliaments whose MPs know what people need better then the Ministers and their provincial antennas, who send Committees out to the constituencies and who are able to present united fronts when the national interest is at stake, cannot be easily bypassed by the Executive. In this sense, we could establish an analogy: the more Parliament is accountable to the people, the more it will be able to hold government accountable. The less a Parliament is accountable to citizens, the easier it will be for the executive to escape its oversight. Therefore, the type of constituent relationships established by Parliament will influence its relationship with Government.

7. At times, we refer to legislative-executive relations in terms of the separation of powers between the parliament and the executive branch and the reinforcement of that separation. This often refers to the extent to which parliament can exercise oversight such as through:

a. Approval and removals of cabinet appointments and important representational positions

b. Its powers to remove the Chief Executive (President or Prime Minister) through censure and no-confidence; and

c. The responsibilities for initiating and amending legislation - such as the national budget for example

8. However, it is perhaps equally, if not more important at this juncture of political development and reconstruction in Afghanistan to look at where the legislature and the executive need to interact in the course of their work and what the mechanisms are for making that more beneficial. The legislature and the executive are not independent: they are interdependent. There will be an amount of tension needed, and also a great level of cooperation.

9. I have observed in long years of parliamentary practice - sitting myself first, then being the spokesman of the government before Parliament, later as a member of government, answerable to Parliament, and finally as political advisor to Parliament Speakers throughout the world, that all too often, we get this equation wrong. I understand that there are two words in your language that can describe these two mistakes: when we want to belittle Parliament from the government end - and the excuse is typically anti-democratic - to "be more effective" and "act faster", what we do is "zulm": we obtain only oppression through too strong a rule. When we swing to far the pendulum to the other side, and every simplest step of the executive has to be scrutinized ad nauseam by the Legislature, we may fall into "fitna", and not enough government will only have chaos to offer.

10. In both cases, the government has an easy excuse: we want to act faster, or they don't let us do anything. Parliament, on the other hand, has a more difficult explanation to offer to its constituents. Hence the need to dose wisely the amount of control that is needed with the amount of executive freedom one has to give to the Executive. Effective and legitimacy have to walk hand in hand: one without the other opens avenues to authoritarian rule or to grandstanding without results.

11. A Legislature can be treated differently by Government, depending on its relationship with the political party in power. I have served a government in majority in the House, and then the next government that was the largest minority in Parliament. In the first case, the temptation was always there to ignore the Parliament: they were from the same party, no need to consult a lot. A Parliament must always be aware that it needs to preserve its institutional leverage, especially when the majority coincides with that of government. In the second case, there was a risk of obstruction and indeed a situation where the Legislature battled the government perhaps too hard. Parliament also needs to know where the limits are, precisely to avoid giving the government the excuse of paralysis leading to the inevitable dissolution of the House (and often, loss of prestige of the parliamentary institutions).

12. In the law making process for example - legislative/executive interaction is vital. Both are responsible for doing their best to see draft laws progress through the legislative process. The executive can facilitate this by providing timely information to the legislature - ensuring that committees are appropriately briefed and received requested information in a timely manner. But also, the legislature must have the resources to undertake its share - legal resources, capacity and resources to hold hearings. Members need to be given the time and resources to review bills. These are fundamental give and take aspects of the legislative processes - which do have an impact on building sound democracy and people's confidence in their representatives and understanding of their role. Remember always that legislating is about problem-solving: for this to happen, one needs to know the facts of the problem, and only then come up with solutions.

13. This example brings me to the statement of a fundamental dissymmetry of forces. Parliament is weak, poor, misinformed and understaffed. Even in poor countries, government has thousands of civil servants, all the information and the power of the purse (albeit approved by the House!). There needs therefore to be a struggle to reestablish a reasonable balance: of information, of technical support and of time. I recently met Chairman Anh, the Speaker of the Vietnamese National Assembly, and we discussed an interesting topic: he had obtained from the Central Committee of the Party and agreement that the Parliament would now have 33% of Professional full-time MPs, as opposed to only 25%. These MPs would not be civil servants anymore, under the hierarchy of their respective Ministers. Non-professional MPs or Members submitted to the authority of the Executive, in such extreme ways as in Vietnam, are of course a recipe for a hand-cuffed Legislature.

14. Let me dwell on the issue of information-sharing to enounce a couple of principles: one is that a Parliament, in my views and in numerous legislations in the world, has the right to access ALL documents in power of anyone in the country, and no-one can prevent the House from having that access. Special measures and limitations are in place for reasons of national security or protection of intellectual property, like information is only released to very Senior MPs, but the fact remains that the Parliament can see anything that has been written by government, a company or an individual. The second principle relates to officials, witnesses and their opinions: in many countries and Parliaments of the world, the Committees of the House have the power to summon and hear any individual whose views are deemed important for Parliamentary work or decision. Due respect and regards are to be paid to status and office (for instance, the Committee will visit the Prime Minister instead of calling him or her to the Committee room, but the principle remains that there is a questioning right established in favour of Parliament, to obtain information. This right is clearly superior to that of the Executive, and helps balance the equation of powers.

15. It is equally important to use and work with the media in the context of the Legislative-Executive relationships. Parliament can facilitate broadcasting of question time, hearings and plenary sessions, as well as open the doors to the cameras and microphones of the press. This has proven another important way of leveling the relationship with government.

16. I can cite very recent examples of countries, from East Timor to Benin, from Nigeria to Bangladesh, from Kosovo to South Africa, navigating a complex democratic transition, where the effort has been that of improving, when not establishing the ground rules, for a relationship between the Legislature and the Executive.

17. Some Parliaments have understood that they did not understand public finance, revenue management and budget spending. They have established, with the assistance of the UN and UNDP, Budget Analysis Cells to better manage the budget process. Indeed, no MP needs to be a fiscal expert to become an MP: what is asked from him or her is to ably represent his people. But then, to continue representing well, he needs to know how to deal with taxes and public investments, when to demand and when to support. Again, too many times, we see Parliamentarians supporting a budget they don't understand or opposing a budget they have not read. In the interaction with the executive, this is in my views the very first task - and the most difficult to tackle.

18. Some Parliaments have decided to take the Executive with them when pieces of Legislation tabled before the house are of national importance and generated the model of public consultations. In Niger, the President and the 5 VPs of the National Assembly (each from a different party) led delegations to their provinces to discuss and hear the people on the new package of decentralisation laws, whereby Local Councils (and local taxes) would be established. They came back to Niamey, the capital and siege of the National Assembly, with over 30,000 kilometers in their cars and over 300 amendments to the bills, which were passed by a multi-party coalition. This is again an example which shows that strengthening representation allows for a less dissymmetric relationship with government.

19. The relationship between a Parliament and a Government has many more critical junctions:

a. how are questions tabled, and how are they answered? Is the Chief of the Executive answerable in a reasonably fair manner, without damaging the needed solemnity of his or her function while allowing room for criticism and disagreement?

b. How powerful are the Standing Committees? How much do they know, how well are they known and how respected are they?

c. How easy is it to create an inquiry committee - enough to respond to any grounded suspicion, but not that much that it can be used for parliamentary filibusterism…

d. How multi-partisan is the Bureau of the House or the Board of the Assembly - and how does the Speaker behave as the umpire of the parliamentary debates?

e. Are there parliamentary bodies and commissioners, external to the machinery of the House but accountable to it, that have a specialised mandate to strengthen the oversight capacities of the MPs?

f. How is ICT used at the service of this relationship? Can the Parliament access government information, and as important, can citizens use IT to have their voices heard by Parliament?

g. How can finally the Government structure itself to work better with parliament? In this aspect, I did a couple of things that proved quite useful to the government I served: under the "name, shame and blame" strategy, I published a very telling parliamentary statistical annex that the Prime Minister would use to reprimand Ministers who would neglect their parliamentary duties. I also instituted the breakfasts of the Speaker, where a Minister would be invited to share informally general policy matters with parliamentary leaders from the different parties. I finally brokered an agreement to eradicate parliamentary blockades instrumented through written or oral questions that would keep a full army of civil servants busy, without much benefit for anyone (such as Does the Minister know how much his or her Department invested in the last decade in the Northern provinces - followed of course by the same question referred to the Southern provinces and so forth…).

20. All these issues will be addressed in this very interesting international conference. Afghanistan is very fortunate. By heading the call to create a vibrant and strong representative institution early in your post conflict experience you are addressing the asymmetry in power that characterizes nearly every post-conflict country. And UNDP is proud to be part of that effort. In many transitional or emerging democracies, executive dominance is so exacerbated that unless addressed, it can actually destabilize or derail the political transition.

21. As one of the background documents indicated "if new legislatures are going to have a central role in a nation's governance, it is up to legislators themselves to build strong legislative institutions, by asserting themselves in the regular law making or oversight functions, or through specific structural changes via constitutional amendment, legislation or rules of procedure." Moreover, I would argue that you also can achieve this by finding common ground (amongst yourselves) and with the executive, in solving the many challenges facing the people of this country.

22. Let me add a last thought on how a Legislature can be treated differently, depending on its relationship with the political party in power. I have served a government in majority in the House, and then the next government that was the largest minority in Parliament. In the first case, the temptation was always there to ignore the Parliament: they were from the same party, no need to consult a lot. In the second case, there was a risk of obstruction and indeed a situation where the Legislature battled the government perhaps too hard.

23. For the UN, democracy, - grounded in the UN Charter is a fundamental aspect of human well being and sustainable human development. Peoples' participation in decision-making (albeit decisions affecting social, political and economic matters) is a vital aspect of every traditional culture but at the national political level it needs to be constitutionally guaranteed through the election of representative bodies with robust legislative and oversight capacities. We certainly hope to be able to be an additional partner to UNDP, through the recently created UN Democracy Fund, to support initiatives in this very direction.

24. You have already taken sides - the good side - by convening this conference as the result of a good discussions over the past months. I look forward to the questions that might arise in the open forum and to the rest of debates during these three days.

25. Thank you for your attention.

 

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