The Landless People’s Movement (LPM) has branded the performance of the National Assembly a colossal failure as the House failed to discuss and pass critical bills this year.
This position was made public by the party’s chief whip in the House, Henny Seibeb on Tuesday at a media briefing convened to provide an overview of the august House’s performance from LPM’s vantage point.
Seibeb put the blame squarely on Speaker Peter Katjavivi, who in his eyes failed to provide decisive leadership and direction.
“If a Speaker, out of 31 bills, you achieve zero, if we were in power, we would have fired that Speaker in the last sitting of Parliament. Because that can’t happen, and the ministers are so quiet. The Minister of Justice, Yvonne Dausab tabled two bills, the Combating of Rape Amendment Bill, the Combating of Domestic Violence Amendment Bill, but she also got quiet,” Seibeb said.
He said the two bills are crucial in addressing societal ills such as sexual gender-based violence and rape.
According to Seibeb, the Namibian parliament is characterised by laziness and a plethora of leave days, while some members of parliament are mere salary collectors.
“Imagine, parliament only sits three days in a week and 12 times in a month. So already the time is limited whereby we could debate and have bills passed,” he said.
Referring to Katjavivi, Seibeb said he thinks his time is up.
“If Swapo continues to bring back Katjavivi in February, then we will lose two years.”
He also said the lack of funding for parliamentary standing committees was one factor hampering the work of parliament.
Parliament spokesperson, David Nahongandja was baffled when contacted on Tuesday, saying Seibeb’s assertions were misplaced.
“Where did he get the 31 bills from?” Nahongandja said.
He said in total, 11 out of the 12 possible bills for 2021 were tabled.
Of this, four bills were passed without amendments, while four others lapsed due to the COVID-19 imposed lockdown which brought parliament to a halt.
Meanwhile, two bills were withdrawn by respective ministers, while one was referred to standing committees.
In total, 35 motions were tabled during the year under review of which seven were adopted. Twenty motions lapsed.
In addition, 18 ministerial and 98 auditor general reports were tabled during the period under review.
More so, 188 questions were asked with notice, of which 168 were responded to.
This, according to Nahongandja is not failure, under the difficult circumstances brought about by the advent of COVID-19.
“For those bills that lapsed, those individual ministers were supposed to table them again when the session resumed in August. That is not the work of parliament. Each session starts on a clean slate and nothing is carried over to the next session… so the failure is not at parliament,” he said.
Efforts to reach Katjavivi were fruitless.
Source: The Namibian Press Agency
