A call to place a moratorium on bills before parliament

This is a call for a moratorium on new legislation until a new parliament is elected in 2019.

With the exception of money bills and urgent matters, there are good reasons to halt the line of bills churned out by the government departments.

The first and most fundamental reason for a moratorium is time. With just six months remaining before the general election of 2019 and considering that parliament will rise for the two-month end-of-year break and adjourn for a further two months of campaigning, the legislature has precious little time to even work through the raft of bills already before it.

Parliament is tasked with oversight and deliberative functions as well as legislative, and democracy cannot and must not be short-changed by rubber stamping and rushing through legislation. There is simply too much at stake for the poor, the indigent and the politically excluded for important bills to be processed without full public participation and input not to mention the technocratic, legal and constitutional considerations required of the parliamentary process.

The second and related concern is the supply-side political and institutional pressure from the executive branch to introduce bills under their watch. Each government department is measured and evaluated not only on its adherence to strategic and annual plans, budgets and performance indicators, but also its legislative output.

Commitment to a legislative “indicator” in an annual report is not only a key performance indicator for directors-general and their staff, but a metric scrutinised by parliament in its oversight role. In other words, irrespective of the rationale, quality and appropriateness of the proposed legislation, once recorded in a departmental strategic plan, annual report or budget, parliament expects to see the bill.

It would be helpful for parliament to interrogate far more closely, deeply and thoroughly the rationale, intention, affordability, effects and benefits of proposed bills long before they are sent to Cape Town.

The third relates to the first two. As the country heads towards a critical general election, the potential is heightened for political and partisan considerations to feed into the drafting of bills and most particularly the legislative process.

Yet, as finance minister Tito Mboweni made clear in his medium-term budget policy statement, SA does not have the fiscal and economic luxury to engage in populist policies, and the same goes for legislation. Legislation in the broad national interest must trump party-political and sectional interests.

The fourth imperative stems from the report of the high-level panel on the Assessment of Key Legislation and Fundamental Change chaired by former president Kgalema Motlanthe.

The panel’s findings on the pathologies of parliament and remedial action required are clear, direct and unambiguous. The report states: “The legislative process should be overhauled.”

The panel is concerned about parliament’s repeated failure to engage those directly affected by legislation.

The report also warns of the phenomenon of the development of bills in silos, rather than adopting a crosssectorial and integrated approach to deep-seated structural problems.

DEMOCRACY CANNOT AND MUST NOT BE SHORTCHANGED BY RUBBER STAMPING AND RUSHING THROUGH LEGISLATION

Furthermore, the panel expresses its concern that parliament is overly dependent on the government departments to develop bills, which reinforces the problem of silo interventions. To this could be added concerns about profoundly inadequate, superficial and opaque socioeconomic impact assessments being conducted by government departments (in breach of the stated guidelines) before bills are sent to the cabinet.

There is one last important reason to call time on new legislation which would give comfort to the entire nation. It relates to state capture.

Practically all legislation before parliament now and indeed bills heading to parliament, were conceived, crafted and drafted under the captured Zuma administration.

Given the shocking revelations emerging from the Zondo and Nugent inquiries, there are strong grounds to hold back, review, reconsider and revisit the entire legislative process, from green and white papers, to socioeconomic impact assessments and the drafting of bills. This would provide the nation with the comfort and confidence that a new dawn has indeed broken.

● Hughes is the oldest student in his postgraduate class at Oxford University.