Parliament “failing” both constitutional and public expectations, NGO claims
03 Apr 2011, 7:24 PM
Neil Merrett
Local NGO Transparency Maldives has said that recent claims by parliamentary speaker Abdulla Shahid that the Majlis has failed to meet the expectations of the public were not critical enough, and that the institution was also failing to meet its constitutional obligations.
The NGO’s comments followed a Minivan News interview with Shahid last week where he praised the Majlis for significantly increasing its work rate and increasing the amount of legislation being passed, despite accepting that it had fallen short of the “high expectations” of a public new to democratic reform in the country.
The speaker said that despite overcoming the challenges created by partisan political interests, official statistics had shown that 42 bills had been passed out of a total of 52 submitted to the Majlis last year compared to 2005, where 17 bills were proposed and only five were completed.
Aiman Rasheed, Projects Coordinator for Transparency Maldives told Minivan News that although it shared some of Shahid’s sentiments that there had been improvements within the effectiveness of the Majlis regarding the amount of legislation passed, the NGO was concerned that parliament had failed to work independently and pass vital bills such as a national Penal Code.
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