African Unification Front
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2005
NEXT PAP SESSION BEGINS NOVEMBER 21, 2005
By Dan Kashagama, AUF General Secretary
The Fourth Ordinary Session of the Pan-African Parliament will be held from Monday, 21st November to Friday 2nd December, 2005 at Midrand.
The AUF is pushing the PAP in the next session to address issues including recognition of elections rules in preparation for the PAP elections in 2008. This issue needs to be addressed early because by 2008 many of the current members of the PAP, who have been instrumental in making it functional, will have left the PAP.
The PAP needs to put in place an all-African Electoral Commission to register voters from all over Africa, and also to register pan-African political parties (parties with supporters and candidates in more than one state). The AUF is also recommending the PAP ratify a system of Proportional Representation for use in electing the next Pan African Parliament in late 2008. The AUF will be fielding candidates from all across Africa without regard to states if possible (one party list for the whole continent).
We would like to see the PAP continue as a unicameral house. The best thing would be to have a South African-style proportional representation system without an upper house (no provinces or states "senate")...and failing that, the next best thing is to adopt a system similar to the Mixed Member Proportional Representation in use in Germany and New Zealand...in which states representatives and party representatives can work together in a single chamber.
In the MMPR parliamentary candidates compete in single-member states, as well as simultaneously for the party list. The candidates who achieve a plurality in the single-member state are elected. However, the second vote determines how many representatives will be sent from each party to the PAP...and because there are 265 seats in parliament, more than half the members will be representing their pan African party instead of a state. The elections would be cheap and fairly easy to carry out.
There are other proposals the AUF would like to see addressed by the PAP, and they are all written out as draft legislation on the African Front website.
Africa needs to have a single currency managed by the proposed African Currency Board. It needs to integrate all African armies into a single peace force run by the African Chiefs of Defense Staff, and an integrated diplomatic and foreign service. The PAP also needs to allow the president of the PAP to set up a Cabinet, to be known as the Council of State, that can organise the implementation of PAP resolutions.
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