Africa should get to the point where discussions about peace and security on the continent are no longer needed, the President of the Pan African Parliament (PAP), Gertrude Mongella, said on Tuesday.
Briefing the media after the start of the fifth sitting of the Parliament in Midrand, north of Johannesburg, Mongella said while some conflicts were resolved new ones kept coming onto the agenda.
”When will Africa get to a point where that agenda of peace and conflict becomes a non-issue, an obsolete agenda … which is what we are working on”, she said.
”We cannot develop if Africa is constantly in civil war, conflict or political instability,” she added.
The PAP will focus on the peace and security issues in the Great lakes region, the Darfur region in Sudan, Côte d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of Congo and also — new on its agenda — the tensions in Chad.
Mongella said she hoped that the PAP could tackle these issues before the African Union’s heads of government meet later in the year.
”We want to take on our advisory role,” she said.
Mongella said the PAP would also focus in the coming days on the rationalising of regional economic communities.
”Can we afford so many regional organisations that sometimes overlap, [when] we are talking of becoming a united Africa, a one Africa?” she said.
Mongella again highlighted the Parliament’s vision of becoming the single ruling body for the continent.
”While at national level you can see conflict between parties, as a continental body there are so much peace and harmony that the party division does not limit our work. That’s my hope that one day we would only have the Pan African Parliament to deal with development issues and maybe national parliaments to deal with local issues,” she said.
The PAP has a vision, but lacks the financial resources to realise it. It has asked the AU for more than $11-million, while receiving only $5,8 million.
”On the 8th of May a PAP delegation will meet with the AU and we hope that we could get to the original figure.”
The Parliament would also receive its first financial audited reports. The firm KPMG has been appointed to deal with the auditing and preparing a report on PAP accounts.
”We want to set an example of a good democratic institution which is not shy to present its accounts, because it is African people’s money,” Mongella said.
”If we want other people to be accountable, if we want the AU to be accountable, if we want our governments to be accountable we should show the way,” she said. – Sapa