Hon Chairperson of the House, Ministers, Deputy Ministers, members, members of the public, as freely elected representatives of the people of South Africa, our mission as Parliament is to represent, and act as a voice of the people in fulfilling our constitutional function of passing laws and overseeing executive action.
If we were to follow the Constitutional principle of equality between the three Arms of the State, we should not even be debating this Vote. The situation is dire. Annually, Parliament continues to debate in vain, a Vote of funds that should be treated in the same way as the executive and the judiciary.
This is a Constitutional contradiction that is perpetuated. I trust the National Treasury is listening today in order for them to actually improve on the Vote of Parliament. We need to be frank and honest in this debate whether what we receive financially is congruent to performing standards set for
Parliament within the precinct of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa.
In Strengthening oversight and accountability, we have moved away from the old regime oversight and accountability model, with its discriminatory practices to the current Joint Standing Committee on Financial Management of Parliament. Here we can record both progressive and developmental progress. The powers we have over performance management and financial management of Parliament are both necessary and designed to hold those with institutional authority accountable.
Let us be balanced in our approach where performance requires merit, let's us acknowledge this but equally where performance is of mediocre or poor quality, we also need to be critical and recommend change. In assessing performance, the Joint Standing Committee on Financial Management of Parliament has raised that many of the issues previously raised in quarterly reports gets flagged, and do not get implemented. Similarly, this happens to recommendations of the annual reports.
In execution of the law making mandate, Parliament is committed to greater effort prior to advice that is given to members.
Cognisance need to be taken that legal interpretation is influenced by the orientation and reading of the law by the individual. Jurisprudence shapes how we interpret the law but when we require advice, we are seeking for conclusive interpretation informed by precedence.
Without this, the quality of draft legislation will be found wanting as it has been the case on many occasions here in Parliament. Conflicting interpretations of the law or omissions do not help us as we have discovered when legislation had to be returned to Parliament from the Presidency or from the courts for amendment.
Over the past year, one of the key challenges that made to the Annual Performance Plan, APPs, was the consolidation of the time line indicators into a singular core business charter indicator. The indicators have been incorporated into five strategic priorities as follows: oversight and accountability model;
public participation model; engagement in international fora; strengthening legislative model; and cooperative government oversight mechanisms.
The question that needs to arise here is whether this is actually working and benefiting the administration or making it harder to detect actual performance against indicators.
Once you absorb indicators into one single broader indicator, it is assumed that members are going to have time to trace what is actually happening within a core component. The contradiction relating to the formulas that financially restricts and disadvantages the governing party against its Parliamentary responsibilities will be covered by Hon Joe Maswanganyi who will be talking to this point later.
Much needs to be done to capacitate Parliament. We can actually be in the position to capacitate Parliament more if we in a manner in which we do business as Members of Parliament in this House can actually improve.
Hon Julius we were very angry when you were responding to a member that actually raised a point of order and to actually find yourself bringing such mood into Parliament doesn't really become helpful.
Hon Swart you are actually saying we need to actually promote peace, we need to be responsible, which is what we need to do within this House of Parliament, to actually improve on the decorum. We are one of the rowdiest Parliaments throughout the world and I'm sure we can actually do better because our electorate out there is actually looking at us for their development for improvement of the lives of South Africans. We can really do better and maybe to some extent we need to actually encourage some of the opposition parties to look at what it means to be an opposition party within Parliament because it's not about attacking the ruling party, it's about what we do together when we are in the House of Parliament in order for us to bring about change and development within South Africa.
In conclusion a disjuncture between mandate of Parliament, what is reflected in the APPs and the actual performance must be addressed. Parliament must improve and resource research capacity to enhance its work. The Joint Standing Committee, JSC, on the Financial Management of Parliament needs to seriously address these issues inclusive of total funding of Parliament that impact negatively on the entire operations of Parliament.
Parliament's role and ultimate outcome is to represent the people and ensure government by the people under the Constitution, as well as represent the provinces in the national sphere of government. This mandate of Parliament is achieved through passing legislation for betterment of the lives of South Africans, overseeing government action to promote and monitor delivery on commitments, facilitation of public involvement making this our Parliament an activist Parliament, cooperative government fostering friendly intergovernmental relations and international participation for benchmarking business of Parliament and drawing from global trends of doing Parliament business.
The role of Parliament includes the promotion of the values of human dignity, equality, non-racialism, non-sexism which is really about how you actually treat women in this Parliament which is something that needs to be noted in terms of some of the behaviours that we around Parliament, the supremacy of the Constitution, and a multi-party system of democracy. Parliament upholds our citizens' political rights, the basic values and principles governing public administration, and oversees the implementation of constitutional imperatives.
Setswana:
Ke tiro ya rona re le maloko a Palamente go dira tiro eno gonne re kgethilwe ke batho ba rona ba ba leng kwa ntle ga Ntlo eno gore re tsweledise pele tsotlhe tse re ba tshepisitseng tsona. Ke a leboga.
English:
The ANC supports Vote 2 of Parliament.