African Unification Front
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Feb. 8, 2005
A STRONG AFRICAN PARLIAMENT IS GOOD FOR DEMOCRACY
Article by Dan Kashagama
AU President Mongella at the 2004 Global Summit of Women
The Pan African Parliament is the legislative and oversight branch of the federal government of the African Union. It was established by the Union Act, and by articles of various African treaties and protocols, which also delineate its structure and powers. The PAP is a unicameral legislature. The House has 265 members, five from each of the 53 states in the Union.
The vitality of the Pan African Parliament is important not just for Africa, but also for good governance everywhere in the world. So it is absolutely necessary that the parliamentary government of Africa should get the attention and recognition it deserves from all those people and institutions around the world that are promoting human rights, democracy, gender equality, biodiversity, and development in the African Union.
The PAP is now the most important institution for securing democracy and peace in the African Union. Leaders in Africa and around the world must do more to support the Pan African Parliament. The public is currently being given a misleading image of the Parliament, because much of the reporting understates the authority of the PAP over the African Union federal government, and underreports the positive influence of the federal government over AU state governments.
It is important to acknowledge the fact that the African Union is a federation with a parliament, that the African Union is a country with 53 states. It is important to acknowledge that the African federation is governed by a parliamentary government led by President Gertrude Ibengwe Mongella. It is important to acknowledge that the institutions of the African federation are playing the leading role in securing peace and prosperity for millions of Africans.
NGOs, governments and media around the world should be working to explain the workings of parliament to the public, encouraging people to participate, working to build a positive image of Africa’s leading institution for governance. Strengthening the values, principles and positive images of parliament, will in turn strengthen democracy and increase popular support for the democratic process.
Building the Pan African Parliament is not just about the institution itself, or merely about the work of its members. The process of building the PAP necessitates involving all of the people in Africa, engaging the institutions and state governments to relate constructively to the PAP, in order to build a healthy institution that will ensure the success of good governance, human security, and foster equitable and socially responsible economic growth.
 In four years, Africans will go to the polls to vote in elections of the African Parliament. It is not too early to start preparing the means and the machinery to ensure a fair and easily accessible electoral process. The All-African parliamentary process is too important to be left to chance and to old school politics. If the African people are to prepare for the new era, we must first shed our ignorance of parliamentary governance. We must stand before the world truly ready to defend the Parliament from abuse, truly ready to make it the effective agent of changes that will eradicate war and economic disorder from Africa.
The PAP is the final instrument of legitimate African self-empowerment. The creation of a functional parliamentary order in Africa is, ultimately, what our long struggles have been about. The struggles for African liberation, for equality and sovereignty, for dignity and power, our search for identity and self-determination, all these find their highest expression in a strong Pan African Parliament.
The Pan African Parliament embodies ALL of Africa’s hopes and dreams. It brings together the ideals of universal democracy and of African unity in a grand harmony. Now we must make sure that the PAP lives up to our spoken and unspoken dreams. We must empower our great Parliament, so that it fulfills the hopes we dare not whisper, during our most despairing moments.
Institutions around the world need to pay more attention to the Pan African Parliament, and need to refocus their attitudes in their engagement with Africa, by treating the PAP more seriously, in order to benefit the Parliament’s potential to address and to resolve Africa's concerns. Continuing to bypass the African Parliament in their efforts to address issues is not morally defensible, and in fact undermines the authority and prestige Africa’s most important institution.
The consequences of undermining Parliamentary democracy are well known, and include all of the social and economic ills with which Africans are associated, justly or unjustly. There is no excuse now, for any development program or policy around the world to omit mention of the Pan African Parliament. There is no excuse for any African project or program to ignore the policies and intentions of the Parliament and its leaders.
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