A year and a half after the election of the House of Representatives, the thematic committees in the federal parliament still seem to be struggling to gain momentum in their works. In this tenure of the legislature, the committees have been unable to make any impact with regard to holding the executive accountable in governance and service delivery. As House committees work in a dedicated way on certain issues, the thematic panels are considered the parliament’s workshops. But the legislative units have thus far failed to create much enthusiasm.
It took the House of Representatives over one and half months to sit for the first meeting after it was elected on November 20, 2022. The lower House formed 10 thematic committees on April 28, 2023—over three and half months after the first House meeting was convened on January 9. But the committees got their chairs only at the August-end. Until then, the panels were run on an ad-hoc basis and chaired by the oldest members of the respective committees. All in all, it took nine months for the mini-parliaments to get their full shape and function in a full-fledged manner.
Besides the permanent committees, the parliament forms special panels for specific purposes. For instance, the lower house formed a special committee to probe embezzlements of hundreds of billions of rupees by cooperatives. The committee’s formation helped end the weeks-long parliament obstruction by the main opposition Nepali Congress, which was demanding a panel to investigate irregularities in the cooperatives. As the special committee led by lawmaker Surya Thapa of ruling party CPN-UML begins its work, officials at the parliament secretariat have said they lack even basic resources to carry out the panel’s work.
Officials said that in order to analyse financial transactions of the cooperatives, they needed support of an expert team. But, according to them, the parliament secretariat lacks a budget to hire independent experts. Though they plan to seek the central bank’s help, it’s dangerous to make the parliament so weak that it cannot even carry out its routine tasks. The panel’s plan of seeking experts’ help to analyse the transactions in a professional way sounds rational as a decision based solely on the inquiry of lawmakers in the committee, none of whom have expert accounting knowledge, might later be questioned.
Only a few weeks ago the State Affairs Committee was criticised for offering NGO-sponsored meals to its members and other participants at one of its meetings. The meeting had to be abandoned midway for the same reason. Our lawmakers are often criticised for going on field studies and on-site inspections on the funding of questionable organisations. Similarly, our parliament was in the past pilloried for involving international agencies in crucial tasks such as lawmaking and other affairs where outside involvement created direct conflict of interest. It has thus become imperative for the executive to allocate sufficient budget for the legislature in order to ward off undue influence, conflict of interest and make the legislature capable of doing its basic job.
20.12°C Kathmandu
