Ntombi Mekgwe is the Speaker of the Gauteng Legislature
The Gauteng Provincial Legislature (GPL) hosted the second in its series of Thought Leadership Conversations at the legislature on November 20. The conversations are being held as part of the legislature’s ongoing activities reflecting on the past 20 years of democracy.
The second seminar, “Appreciating and embracing GPL exceptionalism: Looking through the oversight lens”, reflected on oversight as a key area of the legislature’s mandate.
The main presentation was delivered by Michael Youash, PhD candidate at the University of Toronto and contributing author of the Programme Evaluation and Budget Analysis (PEBA). PEBA is an oversight model that was developed and implemented by the GPL in 2002. The legislature’s standing rules were reformed in line with PEBA in 2004.
Youash argued that the GPL should appreciate its achievement in bringing about PEBA. And thus by parliamentary standards, it is a unique development. Secondly, he reinforced and brought to attention the GPL’s resolve in continuing to be exceptional in its oversight activities.
“However, he underscored an all-important point that measuring political institutions is difficult”, says Youash, as there are no exact measures, and political scientists, who like to compare and contrast, tend to rely on broad tendencies as a result.
“The Standing Rules of legislatures provide the basis for these broad tendencies, and when you consider these, the GPL’s exceptionalism becomes crystal clear,” he says.
When evaluating the GPL, he says, measurements were taken along three categories: oversight scope; public participation and oversight; and codification of substantive equality. The GPL’s new and old rules were categorised, assigned a value (must, may or no rule) and given a weighting based on the strength of each rule.
When compared to other legislatures, specifically those of Canada’s House of Commons, Peru’s participatory budgeting process, Bulgaria’s National Assembly and New South Wales’ Legislative Assembly, the GPL benchmarks “very well”, he said.
“Only Bulgaria’s National Assembly requires oversight of annual appropriations, only the New South Wales’ Legislative Assembly requires annual report oversight work; no other legislature considers quarterly reports; synergy in oversight committees is minimal, unlike in the GPL; only the Bulgarian National Assembly surpasses the GPL in public participation and even Peru’s participatory budgeting doesn’t allow for public participation through Congress.
“This wasn’t a case of a global south, newly democratised legislature trying to catch up to its global counterparts,” he says, “The 2004 GPL rules reform represents a significant surge of progressive design far surpassing the formal rules in other notable legislatures.”
Canada, a 150-year-old democracy, has been attempting to reform its Standing Rules for 40 years, he notes.
One of those Standing Orders – Standing Order 84(1) – refers to budget estimates and states that: “In every session the main estimates to cover the incoming fiscal year for every department of government shall be deemed to be referred to standing committees on or before March 1 of the then expiring year. Each such committee shall consider and shall report, or shall be deemed to have reported, the same back to the House not later than May 31 in the then current -fiscal year …”
What this means as noted in the 2012 report of the House of Commons, “Strengthening Parliamentary Scrutiny of Estimates and Supply”, is that “some standing committees do not study or report back to the House the estimates that were referred to them. In other words, as committees are not required to review the estimates, sometimes they do not do so.”
Youash pointed out that theorists on legislative studies point out that the Westminster parliamentary system pits the executive against parliament/legislatures. Referring to Graham White’s observations of Canada’s provincial legislatures that “Ministers do not wish to see independent, effective committees, with substantial opposition, challenging their power or causing political difficulties for them … provincial legislative committees may thus be hamstrung … by government reluctance to sanction active committees. A telling illustration of this last point is that the fact that until recently the Agriculture Committee of the Saskatchewan Legislature had not met for decades.”
The GPL’s reforms, says Youash, defy existing legislative studies theory, present an exemplar to new and old democracies, and should serve as a touchstone for the GPL’s future.
Legislative studies tends to be dominated by American legislative studies, he continues, and the US Congress becomes the teleological endpoint of legislative development; that is, it is the benchmark against which other legislatures, and their resemblance to it, are measured.
Scholars and practitioners elide the reality of two different governmental systems: Presidential/Congressional and Cabinet/Parliamentary, Younash asserts. “Malcolm Aldons (2003) asked whether committees were appointed to assist the executive or check the executive; PEBA asks how the GPL can assist the executive through checking it.
“American legislatures operate in presidential systems that are manifestly status quo-oriented, with concurrent checks and balances as well as the separation of powers. It is a system designed to inhibit, if not prevent, transformation. “Parliaments are designed to enable transformation by government with a clear electoral mandate, without absolving the government of the day of responsibility for its actions,” he says.
Youash notes that the socioeconomic rights enshrined in the Bill of Rights, and the Constitutional requirement that the state must uphold these “confer a transformation mandate on all forms of government, including provincial legislatures”.
“The PEBA-based reforms to the GPL’s Standing Rules provide the institutional frame for realising the transformational potential of the GPL.”
Transformation requires change – and change requires evaluation. The best time, Youash says, in the GPL’s budget oversight cycle, to examine problem areas and make changes is during the Medium Term Budget Policy Statement stage.
“The sheer quantity of information and the number of opportunities to apply information in oversight work over the budget cycle can enhance deliberative quality in committees,” says Youash.
Further, he notes, more information means members of committees are empowered, across all parties, which builds meta-consensus, where even if members do not agree on the outcome of a deliberation, they can agree on the quality of the process used to get there. The benefits, he says, are collegiality and legitimacy.
The challenge, he says, is for the GPL to continue to be exceptional. “The goal here is for the GPL to recognise the potential of becoming more transformative by fully utilising what already exists while avoiding the dead-end routes offered by international development models.
“By truly appreciating what has already been designed it might just be possible to fully embrace the challenges and opportunities currently facing the GPL. We need to appreciate that the exceptionalism comes from years of confronting exceptional challenges which has propelled the GPL to achieve what others have not.
“Don’t be self-congratulating,” he warns, “The current challenges are even more daunting.”