In January the Inter-Parliamentary Union held the first of a series of panel discussions on the parliamentary dimension of democracy. These panels will be aimed at developing guidelines to make it possible to draft a Guide of good parliamentary practice, a handbook intended to show how parliaments can contribute to democracy and to identify the main characteristics of a democratic parliament, with examples of good practices in the different regions of the world. The time is particularly right for such work. As former Speaker of the Israeli Knesset Avraham Burg notes, there is currently a global “erosion of the role of parliaments in many sectors of the world”.
This is of particular concern for young people. According to a dispatch from Guysen Israel News, “young Israelis trust their army, but not their parliament”. According to a poll, “77 per cent trusted Tsahal; 66 per cent the judicial system; 42 per cent the media; and 32 per cent the Knesset”.
The views of the former Knesset Speaker, who resigned from parliament last year, are also held by Beninese journalist Francis Kpatindé, who writes for the Paris weekly Jeune Afrique L'intelligent: “In public opinion, the press and the executive branch, parliamentarians are perceived as nay-sayers and time wasters, sometimes because parliamentary work involves a lot of ruckus and is so slow. Parliamentarians should do a better job of communicating, be more transparent and above all explain how they are overseeing the executive branch and consolidating democracy, which protects the interests of the population. That is not understood. They must also open up to domestic social debates and discussions on foreign policy. Parliamentarians do not take part in the great challenges of our times. They have to become more visible.”
British professor David Beetham, the rapporteur for this exercise, went further, stating that “there is the perception that parliaments are increasingly being bypassed in the governing process, and both collectively and individually, their members are held in low public esteem. It is timely, therefore, to seek to establish some clear criteria for democratic parliaments to help increase understanding of their place and importance in the democratic process and improve their public standing within it”.
The preliminary results of this exercise will be presented at the Second World Conference of Speakers of Parliaments that the IPU will hold in September in New York.
Has the time come to suggest a new way of looking at politics? Mr. Peter de Souza, an expert on democracy assessment at the University of Goa (India) thinks that it is rather time to formulate “a kind of navigational code” and to “re-establish an engagement with a moral vision”.
L.B.