By DOH JAMES SONKEY
A delegation of seven Members of Parliament made up of five men and two women from the Republic of Malawi paid a working visit to Cameroon last March 19 to 23, 2018 with expectations to enrich their Parliamentary management system with that of Cameroon.
The Head of delegation of the Malawi Parliamentary Service Commissioner equivalent to Questor in Cameroon, Hon Ralph Pachalo Jooma confided in reporters that “the President of the National Assembly of Cameroon, Hon Cavaye Yeguie Djibril is a man full of huge parliamentary experience and that is why we came to learn from this rich experience.”
But this view was contradicted by the Vice President of the Finance and Budget Committee of the National Assembly, Hon Joshua Osih who told reporters that Cameroon MPs during a working session almost swapped the teacher-student position with their Malawian counterparts “when we surprisingly discovered that we have a lot to learn from the management of a Parliament system from the visiting team because they are more advanced than us in several democratic aspects.”
Talking to reporters, Hon Joshua Osih of the leading opposition Social Democratic Front, SDF party explained that “well we learnt a lot from them because they have a completely different budgetary and public finance approach and a lot of things that we can implement in Cameroon in order to make our public finance procedure more transparent and efficient.”
On where Malawi Parliament is ahead of that of Cameroon, Hon Joshua Osih said “their provision makes it in such a way that there is more transparency and accountability. For instance; every appointee by their Head of State presents himself or herself in front of the Appointment Committee of the Malawi National Assembly which has the power to approve or reject an appointee after scrutinizing to know if he or she is up to task. That is a disposition that Cameroonians could only dream of. The examination of their state budget is a nine week process which makes more sense than the couple of days we have here in Cameroon. The budget development process is such that all the stakeholders are consulted in a national discussion before it is tabled in Parliament unlike here in Cameroon where it is more of one or two man show.”
The leader of the Malawian MPs delegation, Hon Ralph Pachalo Jooma told reporters that “As Parliamentary Service Commissioner Group whose equivalence here is Questors, we manage the institution, handling staff, MPs and the Parliamentary institution. We came to Cameroon to study how our fellow questors are managing institution and the staff. We met the Speaker of the National Assembly and presented our case to him. Perhaps we have met our expectations already. With Cameroon and Malawi enjoying a cordial relationship, we believe that our working session with Questors helped us learn from each other on how best to improve our Parliament.”