Don’t waste precious hours on self-praise

It is distressing to see the widening gulf between what people expect from parliament and what our parliamentarians actually deliver. A recently unveiled report by the Transparency International Bangladesh (TIB) has painted a damning picture of how valuable work hours were spent in the 11th parliament. According to the study, the current parliament spent only 16.7 percent of its time on debating and formulating laws – which is one of its key responsibilities – while more time was spent on self-praise. While ruling MPs spent 19.8 percent of time praising the prime minister and their own party, and 19.4 percent of time on various achievements of the government, only 0.4 percent (2.97 hours) was spent talking about corruption, which is eating away at the hard-earned achievements of the nation. Moreover, other critical issues were also hardly discussed. Therefore, we think the TIB is right to conclude that the 11th parliament has not been able to perform the role expected of it.

The fact that only around 124 hours of the total 744.13 hours were spent discussing laws passed in parliament speaks volumes about the weaknesses of the current parliament. In many countries of the world, around half the time is spent on formulating laws. For instance, in 2019-20, the UK parliament spent 49.3 percent of time on legislative affairs, while the Indian parliament spent 45 percent of time on lawmaking the previous year. Conversely, the performance of our parliament can be summed up by the fact that it took only 1.10 hours on average to pass a bill in the absence of any constructive criticism/discussion by the lawmakers.

The most obvious reason for such a situation is the absolute majority of the ruling party and the absence of an effective opposition, as also underscored by the TIB; other factors include the lack of effective parliamentary standing committees and the absence of a code of conduct for parliamentarians. If the standing committees remain inactive, who will hold the relevant ministers accountable? If the parliamentarians themselves are not aware of their role and what their conduct should be, how can we expect them to take care of their constituents?

The Transparency International study has laid bare a fundamental problem of our parliamentary system. We hope that incumbent MPs will take its findings seriously and hold each other accountable. The importance of this exercise should not be lost on us even if the current parliament does not have much time left. The parliament must always be a place where public interests are protected through judicious and constructive engagement by public representatives.