Here’s how to assess MPs’ performance

In every Parliament, it has become a tradition for a section of the media to rank best, worst performing MPs by assessing the plenary Hansard, usually covering a limited period of time, as the SI unit to confer exceptionalism to those that appear the most, and condemn the least featured.

This commentary intends to highlight the problematic idea of judging best and worst MPs solely on sketchy references to parts of the Hansard.

Not that MPs are evaluation averse. Over 200 journalists are accredited to cover Parliament, making Uganda’s legislature one of the most open to assessment and scrutiny in the world.

In the conduct of their assessment, the media, in this case the New Vision, ought to employ a method that gives readers the whole story, detailing a scientific, verifiable rating of MPs in line with their constitutional responsibilities of legislation, appropriation and oversight.

Let’s take an assessment using Hansard. Defective as it is, why did it not encompass the Hansard and or minutes of meetings of Committees, which are the engines of processing Parliamentary work, for transmission to plenary where decisions are made? Moreover, the Rules of Procedure bars Committee Members from engaging in debate on matters processed by them. Was that, too, factored in during the study?

To illustrate the failure of this problematic mode of assessment, let us look at oversight. The 11th Parliament made a decision to move away from board-room style audits to value for money audits, which greatly relies upon field work, where MPs go and inspect whether, for instance, a school whose paperwork is neat and foul-proof, actually exists on the ground to the standard contemplated during appropriation.

An example is the Committee on National Economy’s recent countrywide tour to assess the progress of government seed secondary schools in every sub-county, with several discoveries. How can New Vision reconcile the idea that an MP who is part of that activity is branded a non-performer for not featuring in the Hansard?

On appropriation, which is a cardinal responsibility, MPs endure interminable sittings to pass the budget within the strict timelines imposed by the Public Finance Management Act, and the bulk of appropriation actually happens in Committees, which for long hours study and report to the House on Ministerial Policy Statements of Ministries, Departments and Agencies.

All those significant efforts in fulfillment of a core constitutional responsibility of MPs is set aside for the clichéd study of fragments of the Hansard, despite glaring evidence that it is a shortcut that yields very unfortunate results, given its inherent unfairness and spectacular failure as a method to judge MPs’ performance.

The chairperson, Committee on Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries, Ms Janet Okori Moe, was branded a non-performer by the assessment, for allegedly never saying anything during the period reviewed. Interestingly, she actually shepherded the enactment of a Bill – The Fisheries and Aquaculture (Amendment) Bill 2021.

The tragedy is that for constituents out there, that report, coming from a credible media house, can mean the condemnation of their MP to electoral defeat, yet a lifting of the veil would reveal that the assessment is founded on narrow grounds.

Fundamentally, the public ought to be led to develop deeper concern about what MPs do in Committees, in oversight activities, and appropriation-which is a collectively made decision-to see the philosophy that guides MPs’ decisions, and whether these speak to the aspirations of citizens.

That would be a progressive discussion, whose ultimate result would be keeping MPs on their toes as they handle decision making on sensitive matters, instead of a diversionary assessment bereft of depth.

In advanced democracies like Australia, debate especially on Bills, Budget and generally all Parliament business, is exhausted in committees, such that when matters are brought to plenary, time isn’t wasted on unnecessary filibustering but quick decision making because all positions have already been well canvassed.

That is the future to which the 11th Parliament and its successors aspire, because ultimately, legislatures are judged not by unwinding speeches made in plenary but how thoroughly businesses have been processed in committees to foster decision making, which is really the most important thing that should happen in plenary.

The writer is the Director Communication and Public Affairs, Parliament of Uganda.