Ranking the Performance of Legislators : Comparing Apples and Mangoes

Ranking the performance of Legislators : comparing apples and mangoes .

By Dr.George Didi Bhoka ,MP Obongi Constituency

I would like to thank the new vision publication for the time ,resources and efforts made to measure and rank the performance of members of the 11^th parliament of the republic of Uganda .This is a right step in the right direction ,albeit with room for improvement .

Performance management is a good leadership and management accountability tool .None the less ,the measurement and ranking should be based on sound scientific and management principles and practices .

The ranking of the performance of members of parliament has raised mixed feelings among legislators as well as the general public with those who are perceived to be stellar performers basking in fame and the non performers bearing the brunt of their voters .

The institution of parliament has a constitutional mandate that requires members of parliament to make laws ,appropriate resources ,oversee implementation of government programs and represent the voices of their citizens ,among others. The realization of the vision ,mission and objectives of parliament requires individual ,team and organization wide efforts and contributions .Therefore any efforts to measure and rank parliamentary performance objectively should recognize the above realities of parliamentary business .

Parliament does its work through various methodologies that include but not limited to plenary sessions ,sectoral and standing committees ,oversight through field visits and scrutiny of audit reports ,presentation of motions ,petitions and matters of national importance ,inter alia .

Most of the work of parliament is done by committees (sectoral and standing) as teams that should share the credit of their efforts and any failures . The reports of the committees that are endorsed by all members of the committees are usually presented by the chairpersons of the committees on behalf of all members. The parliamentary rules of procedure do not allow members of committees to debate their own report . Making the chairpersons of the committees and the leaders of government business that have a duty to respond to reports ,petitions ,motions and work with the committee chairpersons to present bills on the floor of parliament ,take the credit for joint efforts is unfair and at most demotivating to the committee members.

Motions and matters of constituency and national importance are responded to my the prime minister and ministers in every sitting of parliament, depending on the number of issues raised .It is not a surprise that the prime minister ,who is also the leader of government business in the house ,has to respond to all issues and concerns raised by legislators on the floor of parliament .

The opportunity for a member of parliament to contribute to debate on the floor of parliament subjectively depends on the eye of the speaker catching a member of parliament to submit to the matter of debate on the floor of parliament during plenary sessions. Every member of parliament has the will to contribute on every matter on the floor of parliament during plenary .None the less ,the speaker has the discretion to choose who to speak and who not to speak ,based on his/her criteria of choice.

For the presiding officer of the house ,it is imperative that he/she has to speak through out the sitting to guide the proceedings of the house . I just wonder how the same metrics have to be used to measure the performance of the presiding officer of the house .

The prime minister and ministers have to respond to all issues and concerns raised for government to take action . It is therefore not a surprise that ministers responsible for critical sectors have to respond all matters raised concerning their ministries and agencies that they supervise .

The leader of opposition in parliament and his shadow ministers and committee chairpersons have to provide alternative policy positions on every matter raised to government . The oversight committees of parliament are chaired by the opposition .

Therefore it is not rocket science to know that those ranked to be high performance did so in executing their duties as presiding officers ,leaders of government and opposition business in the house ,ministers and chairpersons of committees that represented the views of the members of parliament in committee businesses and responded to matters raised on the floor for their appropriate action .

There is the need for the institution of parliament to guide individuals and institutions that would like to assess and rank the performance of parliament to use Appropropriate scientific management methodologies that assess the performance of legislators based on their mandate of legislation ,appropriation ,oversight ,representation and constituency engagements . There should be clear performance objectives ,key performance indicators ,baseline information, performance targets ,measurement tools, objective analysis ,ranking ,packaging ,dissemination of individual ,committee and institutional performance results linked to continuous performance improvement mechanisms .

The performance measurement system should not be a one size fits all ,given the different roles ,responsibilities and obligations members of parliament undertake ,guided by the parliamentary rules of procedure .

Looking forward to the media houses and institution of parliament practicing sound individual ,team and organizational performance monitoring and evaluation system that provides more objective performance measurement and ranking for legislators to ensure we don’t compare apples with mangoes . There is room for improvement in the performance of the legislators as well as the media houses and institutions making efforts to hold members of parliament and the institution of parliament accountable .

The writer is the Member of Parliament for Obongi Constituency .