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participant explained, “when our bill is [to] go to them, if they don’t have enough experience,
they can make a lot of mistakes and they come up with wrong recommendations.”
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Enabling Environment – Medium Priority
Making changes in parliament’s external enabling environment was considered a medium
priority, and was recognized as a fundamental building block for legislative capacity and
parliamentary accessibility and responsiveness, which were lower priorities. There is
considerable overlap between internal organization and management and the enabling
environment, and it is therefore worth noting that many of the changes in the previous category
would also require changes to the enabling environment.
Legislative/Constitutional Framework
The principal reason that the enabling environment is relatively important in terms of priorities
is due to the pressing need for changes and greater clarity in the legislative/constitutional
framework. This sub-category was identified as key to addressing many of the problems
parliament faces, most prominently the ‘problem’ of the (s)election of the
Guurti.
One
participant explained that addressing problems in the constitution was a priority because it was
“prepared when there was no government. Now it is over 21 years and the loopholes are plenty.
When it was made it was tailored to a particular time,” and thus the current constitution is “not
complete.” Participants spoke of legal loopholes and ambiguities as helping to allow the
executive to interfere in the work of parliament, thereby breaching the separation of powers.
In terms of specific legal loopholes that need addressing, participants identified the following as
pressing problems which affect their ability to carry out their functions:
•
Membership of the house of
Guurti
: Participants discussed how the House of
Representatives and the
Guurti
have the same number of members, pointing to other
countries where there are fewer members in the upper house than the lower house. One
participant proposed the number of
Guurti
members be reduced to five per region.
Interviewees, including members of the
Guurti
, also identified this as a key priority as
Somaliland nears the next parliamentary elections.
•
Election Laws: Participants and interviewees expressed support for a comprehensive
electoral law for parliament in order to guide the forthcoming elections to both houses.
An enduring concern for participants was the apparent lack of clarity in the constitution
regarding whether the
Guurti
be selected by clans or popularly elected. Participants, all
of whom were members of the House of Representatives, were overwhelmingly
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Similar issues of capacity are found in the staffing of parliament, though things are changing as recruitment has
become more formalized, as one member of parliament notes in a recent publication by the Africa Research
Institute, “In the past, the people who performed these roles were not graduates. Now we take only the best
graduates. We held a competition to find the best students. Out of 300 graduates we selected only eight. Some of
them are secondary school leavers who are computer-literate, others attended the local university. They have
degrees in different disciplines, but primarily in law. We have sent some of them for further education. The first
two have graduated with master’s degrees – one from Addis Ababa and another from Pretoria. We are building our
local staff. Every subcommittee has one qualified secretary. We also have staff qualified to do budget and
financial work. But we have to train more. In the future, I believe we should ensure that all staff have some
specialization.” (After Borama, ARI, 2013).
