Hon Chairperson, the topic of the debate today - dealing with parliamentary accountability and living up to the people's expectations - goes way beyond the Inter-Parliamentary Union, IPU. In fact, it's a constitutional imperative that we are supposed to do exactly that. If you look at section 43 of the Constitution, we as the National Assembly are elected by the people to represent the people and in that process we are supposed to scrutinise and oversee all executive action.
Maybe we should not be surprised if at some stage some group of citizens out there decides to take us, the National Assembly, to the Constitutional Court for not fulfilling our own duty. We must think about that. As the National Assembly of Parliament, we are supposed to keep the executive, and also the Chapter 9 institutions, accountable.
But there are different forms of expectations by the people out there. Every day, notices are given of motions dealing with relevant issues - things that are important with regard to the expectations of the people out there. But the tragedy is that we in this Parliament almost never debate those issues. We always keep to all the internationally recognised days and we debate those kinds of things, but we never discuss the real issues dealing with the expectations of the people, as if they don't exist. That is also a mistake. Thank you.