Africa-Press – Liberia. Liberia’s leading pro-democracy advocacy organization, Naymote has reiterated its call on the Liberian Legislature to initiate institutional reforms to promote transparency and accountability.
Naymote’s call was contained in its second edition of the Legislative Digest, an annual report on the workings of the Legislature for 2022, intended to foster openness, responsiveness and accountability.
In the report published on Tuesday, Naymote, through its Executive Director, Eddie Jarwolo stated that the Legislature did not improve on its lapses recorded in its first edition of the Legislative Digest (covering 2018-2021).
“Based on the findings of this report, it adopts the same recommendations from last year, given that the substantive issues remain the same from the previous years: That the legislature implements immediate institutional reforms to strengthen its various oversight committees, and establish the appropriate systems for transparency, and accountability, including limiting “executive/secret” sessions to only matters with serious implications for national security and defense as required under the law; that the institution set up a functional website, and ensure voting records of members of that body are made public and available to assess the performance of its members.”
A call for audit
Parts of Naymote’s report reflect the assessment of the United States Ambassador to Liberia Michael McCarthy in December 2022 When he said the Government, especially the Legislature was not doing much to promote transparency and accountability in government. He called on the Legislature to do more to improve accountability in Government by fully supporting anti graft institutions through adequate budgetary allocation and acting on recommendations and audit reports.
Since its inception in 2018, the 54th Legislature has not acted on the recommendations of the General Audit Agency (GAC). Ministries and agencies’ performance reports are often ignored during the adoption of fiscal budget. Critics have attributed the Legislature’s refusal to act on the plethora of audit reports submitted to it every year due to its refusal to subject itself to audit.
The total budget allocated to the Legislature in 2022 amounted to USD 64,383,926.00. The annual budget of the Legislature from 2018 – 2022, accounted for US$228,666,183.00. Despite the huge financial support to the Legislature, Naymote noted that the body does not have any regular publications on its activities and no official website for public information.
It added that there is no publicly available financial report to account for the use of this money and popular demands to audit the financial records of the Legislature have yielded no results. It said “The legislature should submit itself for a full-scale financial and system audit as required of all other public institutions.”
Shrouded in Secrecy
Naymote further stated the assessment did not also find any voting record, making it nearly impossible for citizens to track their elected representatives’ legislative and voting decisions.
According to the CSO, the Legislature did not do much in 2022 to improve transparency and public participation in their activities, adding that it is still difficult for citizens to openly access information about the legislature, including voting records and legislative decisions made in executive/secret sessions. This is happening despite a pledge by Rhode Island Lawmaker with Liberian descent, Nathan Biah to provide electronic voting machine to the Legislature.
Although the number of ‘secret’ sessions reduced in 2022, when compared to 2021, Naymote noted that it is still striking that more than one-third of legislative deliberative sittings were held in ‘secret’ or executive sessions. “This undermines efforts at transparency and public participation, and engagement with the Legislature.”
More laws but weak oversight
Also in its findings, Naymote said more bills were passed in 2022 (53 bills) than in 2021 (29 bills); but oversight of the implementation of the enacted laws, by the executive branch, remains weak. And of these laws,
“Activities of the legislative committees responsible for oversight are not easily accessible, and this assessment could not access reports of ministries and agencies filed with the committees. The team could not also access special reports of legislative committees on their statutory functions carried out during the year,” it said.
In addition, it called on the legislature to institute constitutional reforms in support of affirmative action that increases the proportion of women in both Houses. Currently there are two women Senators out of 30, and eight female lawmakers in the 73-member House of Representatives out of 73.
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