Increase in Parliamentary Seats lacks Vision: Instead Let Cabinet members not be Members of Parliment.

The proposal being floated at NCC by MMD to increase parliamentary seat from does not offer satisfactory reasons. But lets look back first, how do can we improve role of parliament in Zambia and avoid waste of tax payers money to maintain MPs who are normally quite in parliament?

Zambia must do away with MPs acting as MPs and serving as Cabinet Members. YOU CAN NOT BE BOTH THE LEGISLATOR AND EXECUTOR? We can not have one person doing two dinstinct jobs namely to legislate and act as an executive. Cabinet must be independent and should be chosen from MPs. Those who want to be Cabinet must resign from Parliament first. This is the big weaken in our governance. It is not effective and it is not working. How can parliament charge oversight on a ministry when the boss of that ministry sits in parliament? MPs jobs must be be to legislate only and let Cabinet members execute the laws and govern.

I argue that increasing seats should be based on increasing effectiveness of parliament to legislate, provide oversight on the executive, increase number of women MPs and promote good governance. Increasing seats does not mean effective parliament. Maybe Zambians need to think about a bicameral parliament with two legislative houses like in most countries which requires a concurrent majority support to pass any legislation and may give opposition party control of one legislative house.

The idea of having 40 MPs from interest groups is undemocratic and lack real representation of the Zambians. The current nominating MPs system is not helpful to our democracy because all those nominated end in the ruling party control. If Zambians decide to have nominated MPs, let’s do away with this current practice.

Let us have a Special Independent Select Committee to make appointments of all nominated MPs. Nominated MPs must possess distinguishable public service whose expertise e.g in science, business will be useful in parliament. The role of nominated MPs must be to provide constructive non- partisan alternative voices in parliament; and their term must be limited to only 2/3yrs. No party should claim monopoly of nominate MPs to avoid one political party dominance in parliament.

The role of parliament must be to legislate, give oversight to the executive and be representational. This requires having appropriate powers, adequate resources and committed members of parliament. We can not afford having a rubber stamp parliament because that will make the executive unaccountable and corrupt. Large constituencies may require another MP but must be dealt with on a case by case basis. One way to increase the effective of the Zambia ’s parliament is to legally give subpoena powers to parliamentary committees when investigating actions of the executive branch and any public office investigations. Committees must have autonomy authority to subpoena people to publicly testify under oath, investigate and recommend prosecution. Secondly, parliament must approval international trade agreements, debts and loans agreements which the executive branches engage in.