The President of the Pan-African Parliament (PAP), H.E Hon Chief Fortune Charumbira has counselled the PAP Regional Caucuses to submit their draft recommendations on the Amendment of the Rules of Procedure, presented at the plenary session, to the Committee on Rules, Privileges and Discipline. This comes after a two-day consultative meeting of Regional Caucuses at the currently underway first Ordinary Session of the sixth Parliament in Midrand, South Africa.
The Session and its related meetings are held under the African Union theme for 2022, “Building resilience in nutrition on the African continent: Accelerate the human capital, social and economic development,” and the first week of the statutory engagement has been dedicated to the exercise of amending Rules of Procedure to improve the functionality of the Parliament.
Acknowledging the smooth consultative process, H.E Hon Charumbira commended the Caucuses for amicably coming up with recommendations at the same time differing but not in a catastrophic manner as to destroy the process.
“We, as the Bureau, are very excited about the way we are embarking on this journey. Rules are about process and that process should be inclusive to allow members to express their views. We have done well in terms of depth and quality of scrutiny of the Rules of Procedure. It has been a progressive process because the Regional Caucuses do not observe substantive differences arising from Regional Caucuses. This is why we are now giving room to amicable settlement to any discrepancies by enabling Regional Caucuses Chairpersons, Rules Committee and our experts to further sift through the submissions and come to a consensus.”
Some of the main highlights of the recommendations from Regional Caucuses on amendment of Rules of Procedure include the alignment of Rule 1 on definitions in the Rules of Procedure as used in the Constitutive Act of the African Union (AU) as well as the Protocol to the Treaty Establishing the African Economic Community relating to the PAP. The Caucuses recommended that the Regional Caucuses, Permanent Committees and other deliberative organs should be clearly defined. They also advocated for the expansion of the organs of the PAP to include Permanent Committees and Regional Caucuses.
Cognizant of the current configuration of Permanent Committees, the Caucuses recommended the restructuring of the Committees. The matter will be finalised in the meeting of Chairpersons of the Regional Caucuses and the Committee on Rules.
The two-day process was steered by the Regional Caucus Chairpersons namely Hon Jaynet Kabila of Central Africa; Hon Terrence Mondon of East Africa, Hon Sen Azzeddine Abdelmadjid of North Africa, Hon Pamela Majodina of Southern Africa; and Hon Alhagie Mbow of Western Africa.
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