A close eye on Pan African Parliament

FERDINAND Katendeko, the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) chief of staff, outlined on Tuesday how the Pan African Parliament (PAP) and his organisation needed to work in synchronicity to further good governance in Africa.

Katendeko explained at PAP’s Fifth Ordinary Session at the Gallagher Conference Centre in Midrand that the mandate of the APRM is to ensure that policies and practices of participating member states conform to the agreed political, economic and corporate governance values, codes and standards contained in the AU Declaration on Democracy, Political, Economic and Corporate Governance.

“PAP parliamentarians are critical to the success of APRM on a national, regional and continental level. They are responsible for public ownership of the organisation and ensuring a partnership between citizens and parliamentarians,” the chief of staff told the chamber.

Katendeko pointed out a number of problems the organisation was facing, included little knowledge of APRM across Africa, insufficient funding and complying with the time framework and process.

As a voluntary self-monitoring instrument, APRM fosters the adoption of policies, standards and practices that lead to political stability, high economic growth, sustainable development and accelerated regional and continental economic integration through sharing of experiences and best practices, including identifying deficiencies and assessing the needs for capacity building.

By joining APRM, member states agree to voluntarily and independently review their compliance with African and international governance commitments – and herein lies the rub.

Out of 55 African countries only 36 are members of the APRM and only 21 have been evaluated, leaving many not wanting to joint or be evaluated.

In the debate that followed, Guinea said PAP needed to formulate a strategy to encourage more countries to join and submit themselves to good governance.

Setting an example the west African country said it wanted to be evaluated and wanted to know what the cost of evaluation was so that this could be included in its budget.

Guinea also questioned what the impact on those countries who had agreed to being evaluated had been in regards to good governance and democracy.

Burundi, however, voiced an objection in that African states had not been consulted in regard to APRM strategies, some of which had been forced on them from above, without incorporating regional integration and therefore reflection on this was needed.

Rwanda stated that “PAP parliamentarians as representatives of the people it is incumbent upon us to know what was happening in our countries. It takes a lot of courage to be peer reviewed.”

The east African country was one of the first 16 countries to be reviewed and it happened shortly after it had emerged from a dark period of genocide.