By Umaru Fofana
The constitution of Sierra Leone gives tremendous powers to Parliament. But how the House has been using those powers, besides passing into law bills which sometimes are devoid of any serious intellectual debate on their merits or demerits, is sometimes suspect. Such is the power parliament has that they can even remove from office the president of Sierra Leone, elected by the people. Not to mention the carpeting of ministers who were never voted for. They also have powers to ensure and enforce accountability at all levels of the country’s governance system. And even outside of it – the private sector. But parliamentarians themselves are hardly, if at all, held to account. Where they do give account, they do so at their own determination. They tinker on the edge of this abyss of the lack of transparency so much so that many MPs end up being sent packing at the end of every session which in itself is not good, however pleasant, for the smooth and effective functioning of the House. Theirs is a turnover too high and too wide. To the extent that almost the first half of every session is spent by a large percentage of parliamentarians learning the basics of House procedures. By the time they are conversant with these rules and procedures their term is up, and their time is up. Another batch comes and goes and on and on and on. And nothing changes. For over one week I have been trying to lay hands on the cost of the recent official visits to the provinces by a number of parliamentary oversight committees notably on the Auditor General’s report. I understand that even the World Bank and DFiD through a basket fund have been spent around US$ 600,000 towards parliamentary oversight especially the finance and transparent committees. The recent visits by the committees were partly funded by government but the details of how much was spent no one I contacted in the House was willing to provide me with. At least to no avail so far. And without a freedom of information law in place such a piece of information, which should actually be public, is hard to come by and may never be volunteered. Where it does get volunteered it is made to appear as if someone is doing the public a favour by disclosing it. And what is the guarantee anyway that it is not being covered up. Even information on the salary and emoluments of our own representatives which should be easily available on a website seem to be a closely-guarded secret. Anything but that should be kept secret. Proper accountability should at the very least include public officials making their pay public. I just went on the White House website and saw the pay of all those who work with President Obama. Even though there are those who are absolutely phenomenal and doing a great job there, I wonder how much is paid to all the many hangers-on and layabouts at State House, for example. Not to mention at other government departments. This ostensible lack of accountability on the part of state institutions has allowed the poor use of the people’s money to fester opaqueness instead of fostering transparency. And because the House itself is lacking in it makes it difficult to enforce compliance by other institutions. I am particularly interested to know about the cost of the visits to the provinces by these parliamentary committees because even though I consider them important I think these recent trips were a further waste of the country’s resources in addition to what had been misappropriated as contained in the audit report. The MPs claim to have been to the nook and cranny of the country on oversight responsibilities over a very damning audit report on the country’s institutions for which no one has been brought to book. Here is an audit report that indicts virtually all government departments including parliament. This was an audit process that was carried out by the government’s own audit department, negating the notion and fuss made by government that the recent Transparency International report was biased and based on some imperialistic agenda. It says, in simple language, that there are thieves in government offices. And now the thieves are being allowed to go scot-free, apparently aided by the ambivalent attitude of our parliament in dealing with the situation. In my view it was completely pointless – perhaps scandalous – for parliament, through its oversight committees, to have spent hundreds of millions of leones on per diems, transport, accommodation, etc to “investigate” or carry out an audit of an audit report that was an outcome of a proper audit. It is duplicitous, unnecessary and wasteful. What should have been done would have been to bring to book all those who were found to have had their hands on the till(er) by the Audit Service as presented in their 2013 report for the year 2011. Unfortunately their exemplary work is being compromised in part by this phoney action of parliament traversing the country pretending to be acting on the audit report. The truth is that many of these House oversight committees hardly ever oversee ministries and departments in the real or true sense of the word. I think a first step would be to establish a proper ethics committee in the House that should be looking at the official conduct of parliamentarians. For example when committee members go out on oversight responsibility, it is a widely-held view that the institutions they go to audit provide them accommodation and feeding. This, despite all of that having been addressed by the per diem they receive from the tax payers. Who knows how many hotels and guest houses even exempt some of them from paying, which should be an ethical issue if they accept the favour. During his trial last year, the former head of the maritime administration, Philip Lukulay said in open court that he spent over Le 70,000,000 (seventy million leones) on entertaining MPs during one of his appearances before them. Everybody can guess what that money was paid for. Yet nobody batted an eyelid. No one asked the necessary questions. Nobody took action. Until we get parliament right our governance will be a waste of time and a continued lie-telling enterprise to the people during and after every five years. Coupled with pretentiousness and bigotry such as we have today. And this has nothing to do with one political party or another. The two main political parties represented in the house have, as far as I know, never disagreed on issues of ethics in parliament. Even during the land tussle as set off by the then minister of lands, Dr Dennis Sandy, implicating some members of parliament, the house spoke in unison. More interestingly, the house members chose to investigate two of their own. The report findings could have been easily guessed even before they were published. The word is, apparently, COVER-UP. © Politico 05/09/13
