Parties zero in on serial MP absentees

Parliamentarians who have mastered the art of staying away from parliamentary sessions should count their days as parties have started discussing how to punish errant MPs who absent themselves from the house without valid reasons.

The current Mid-Year Budget Review sitting of Parliament has seen the worse attendance by MPs with a reported over 50 MPs staying away from the plenary session last week as reported by The Nation.

This represents trends that have long been established by MPs who abrogate their representative role by refraining from attending parliamentary sessions hence denying their constituents representation and drawing allowances without rendering services for the same.

On average each MP of the 194 draws K100 000 in allowances per day when Parliament is meeting. This totals to K19.4 million of taxpayers money spent on parliamentarians in a day. On the day 50 MPs were absent government spent over K5 million paying parliamentarians who did not render their service to their constituents.

MPs are paid their sitting allowances weekly in advance.

But a political commentator Ernest Thindwa talked of the losses that are incurred in a situation where MPs stay away from Parliament.

“The costs are so huge because people in the constituencies put all their trust into these honourable men and women, as far as representation is concerned. They look forward for development to trickle down to the common person in the remotest part of the country via the MP. As such all MPs, wherever possible including Cabinet ministers, should be available in the House to give it its decorum. But what has been happening currently is not [giving] value for money. It is a shift from MPs’ core responsibilities. Parliament must deal with this issue decisively,” he said.

A section of Malawians from various districts across the country expressed their concerns this week at the failure by their MPs to attend parliamentary sessions.

“We expect our MP to take it to government that we are suffering with hunger here,” said James Saidi of Mulanje. “It is, therefore, discouraging to hear that an MP left the constituency on the pretext that he was going to represent us only to divert to do his personal errands.”

Sandra Nyambose from Chitipa decried the tendency of absent MPs saying it is a betrayal of the trust of constituents.

“It is unfortunate that while voters suffer in hospitals that do not have drugs, our MPs are choosing not to stand with us. I was shocked to see the gaps in Parliament on TV one day. These people are putting our lives at risk and the bad thing is that we cannot touch them since they removed the provision to recall them [Section 64],” she said.

Masauko Chinthenga, a resident of Mtakataka in Dedza, warned that constituents would one day resort to a peaceful march to Parliament in protest of the trends.

Chief Whips for Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and Malawi Congress Party (MCP) acknowledged in an interview on Wednesday, the growing trends of both absenteeism and lack of punctuality by the members which they described not only as unacceptable but also terrible.

DPP Chief Whip Henry Musa said the trends were worrisome and that the Business Committee of the House was supposed to intervene quickly to put a stop to the vice.

“It is a worrisome development when MPs take parliamentary business casually. There is indeed a growing tendency by some MPs to skip parliamentary sessions for their own reasons. This is shameful and a stab in the back of the constituents who expect their MPs to represent them in the House. Whatever the case, this has got to stop because it is wrong,” he said.

Mussa said DPP has been documenting the attendance of its MPs and party officials will soon meet to discuss what to do with those MPs deemed to have thrown away their responsibility to be representatives of their people in the august House.

“We understand that sometimes it is difficult for an MP to be full time at Parliament as they sometimes are called to attend to other duties outside the House but that should have limits. The Business Committee must make a position on this. Otherwise it is difficult to say whether adjusting the payment of sitting allowances for MPs would prove a solution to the problem.

Concerned parties have in the past questioned the wisdom by Parliament to hand out weekly sitting allowances to MPs in advance which they claimed has caused many parliamentarians to stay away from the House.

His MCP counterpart Robin Lowe had no kind words for those MPs with a knack of absenting themselves from parliament, when he spoke to the Weekend Nation in a telephone interview.

“This has been noted and it is no good news at all. We should all be ashamed to be in this kind of situation. As MCP we have also been concerned and therefore we have already issued warnings to our MPs to strictly abide to our code of conduct. Of late we have seen an improvement in attendance but our main concern now remains on punctuality. Not many MPs return from tea breaks on time. From what we have observed some parliamentarians only come to the chamber to show themselves up as having attended which is not good,” said Lowe.

Chief Whip for People’s Party (PP) Ralph Jooma acknowledged the importance of parliamentarians attending plenary sessions as it provides MPs with the platform to perform their core functions.

“Firstly, as legislators the only place where we can make laws is Parliament. Hence the need for availability of MPs in the House cannot be overemphasized. This is, albeit, to provide the representative role that we have, our constituents expect us to represent them in Parliament. We are there for them to present challenges that are in our constituencies,” he said.

But when questioned as to what decisive measures Parliament is taking to bring back discipline in the House, Parliamentary spokesperson Leonard Mengezi in an emailed response said the apparent stay away by most MPs from the House in the past two weeks was attributed to security concerns.

“The first week of the Mid-Year Budget Review was characterized by issues of Powers and Privileges of MPs and due to security issues that had taken place it was agreed in the Business Committee of the House for Government to assure Members of their security and this has been done. We have, therefore, seen great improvement in MPs attendance and business of the House is being done quite orderly following the rules of the House,” he said.

However, Mengezi acknowledged the reports of over 50 MPs staying away in a single session. n