By Alex Yomah
Naymote, Partners for Democratic Development, says a total of US$ 64,383,926 allocated to the Legislature in the 2022 budget is unaccounted for.
Naymote reported that there is no publicly available financial report to account for the use of the money.
The civil society organization criticized the Legislature in its second edition presented January 10, 2023 which covered findings from an assessment and monitoring.
The Legislative Digest is an annual publication of the institution fostering legislative openness, responsiveness, and accountability in Liberia.
According to Naymote’s Executive Director, Eddie Jawalo, the assessment also found out that the Legislature held 167 sittings, of which 106 (63%) were regular sittings, 36 (22%) were executive sittings, 9 (5%) were special sittings, while 16 (10%) were extraordinary sittings.
The report states that there were 29 public hearings held during the year where all secret sittings were held by the House of Representatives in 2022 with the Legislature passing a total of 53 bills during the year 2022, of which 35 (66 %) originated from the Executive/presidency, 12 (23%) from the House of Representatives, and 6 (11%) from the Senate.
“Popular demands to audit the financial records of the Legislature have yielded no results,” Jawolo stated further.
“The assessment did not also find any voting records or reports of ministries, agencies, and commissions filed with the Legislature, for instance, annual reports,” Jawalo explained.
“This perhaps led to a decrease in executive sitting numbers, from 35% in 2021 to 22% in 2022,” he added.
“Overall, for the past years 2018-2022, the Legislature has passed 182 bills of which 43 constituting 24% originated from the House of Representatives, 20 (11%) from the Senate, and 119 (65%) from the Executive or Presidency,” he stated.
Commenting on Budget, he said that the annual budget of the Legislature, 2018-2022, accounted for US$228,666,183 and stated further that despite the huge financial support to the Legislature, the body does not have any regular (official) publications on its activities or any official website for public information.
He further stated, “The assessment did not also find any voting record, making it nearly impossible for citizens to track their elected representatives’ legislative and voting decisions.”
“Similarly, it was impossible to access reports of ministries and agencies at the legislature apparently because the ministries and agencies have not been submitting periodic reports to that body since 2018,” he continued.
Jawalo stressed further that although the number of ‘secret’ sessions have reduced in 2022 as compared to 2021, but it is still striking that more than one-third of legislative deliberative sittings were held in ‘secret’ or executive sessions.
He said that this undermines efforts at transparency and public participation, and engagement with the Legislature.
The findings suggest that more bills were passed in 2022 (53 bills) than in 2021 (29 bills); but oversight of the implementation of the enacted laws, by the executive branch, remains weak. Activities of the legislative committees responsible for oversight are not easily accessible, and this assessment could not access reports of ministries and agencies filed with the committees and the team could not also a
