RCDF destroying Parliament!

 J. Roughan

16 March 2010

Honiara  

 

Last week the Rural Constituency Development Fund and its various wantoks--Rural Livelihood, Millennium, Special Mini Project, Parliament Mini Project Funds--once again entered into the working heart of Parliament. Something that was suppose to be of secondary importance, a thing on the side, as it were, has become more and more a hindrance to Parliament's essential work.

 

MPs are elected first and foremost to work at law making, to look after the affairs of state and to keep government departments and its agencies on their toes so that they work in the best interest of the nation's people. Since 1993, when Solomon Mamaloni introduced it, the RCDF and its various off shoots have come to dominate members thinking, planning and operating. What was suppose to be a side line event, something set up to assist MPs better handle the needs of their people, has, instead, taken over and dominated the process. 

 

And strange as it may seem, back in 1994 people already knew in their bones that the CDF (as it was called at the time) would prove to be too much a temptation for parliamentarians. The former Minister of Finance, Chris Abe, intended at that time to seek parliament's approval to put an end to the CDF because of the many abuses that were turning up. SIDT, before the CDF proposal came up for debate, had already conducted a survey asking approximately 1,200 people, rural and urban, what they thought about scraping the whole CDF idea. 

 

Most survey participants, more than 90% in fact, demanded that the funding scheme must continue but they were also convinced that the Honorable must NOT handle the funds. Allow another group, reflecting different communities in a typical constituency--men, women, youth, pro- fessional, etc.--be elected and deputized to admin these various funds and, most importantly, be held legally accountable for all monies distributed. However, the member must not be involved in any way with the giving out of monies, passing judgment on project proposals or having a say on how the fund was administered. After all, these funds really do belong to the constituency, NOT to the member.

 

That event, unfortunately, never took place! Over the years MPs no longer focused primarily on law making, monitoring government's outreach programs to its citizens and working hard for the better implementation of the laws of the land. Instead, typically, a member's time is seriously taken up by acting as a Project Director, Social Welfare Officer and a walking ATM for constituents everyday needs, e.g. transporting dead bodies back to the village, paying out school fees, ship fares, bags of rice, Honiara walk-about money, etc. etc.

 

And most unfortunate, many constituents couldn't care less about their member's lawmaking ability and keeping a critical eye on government's education, medical and infrastructure work. All these tasks are government's business with little to do with the their member, so they say. But the member is fundamentally elected to be part and parcel of government's outreach work and must have much to say about how the nation is governed.. 

 

A good case also could be made out that members' attendance in parliament has grown weaker and weaker over the past years. MPs too often act as if parliamentary attendance is a kind of volunteer work and required if and when the member has enough free time to attend. On more than one occasion, for example, the Speaker of the House has suspended a sitting until a quorum of members has been reached and the meeting can go ahead. Even on the best of days, Parliament's chambers are far from entirely filled!

 

This essay is not a plea to abolish the many versions of CDF that have grown up over the past two decades or so. But it does call into question the wisdom of continuing along this line which is basically undermining Parliament and all it stands for. Of course a full public disclosure of how the more than $2 million has been spent by each and every member is still called for. But this current essay is a plea to disengage members from the nitty-gritty of dispensing money and other assistances in the vain hope that such an exercise will insure a member's re-election bid.

 

Past electoral history, however, disproves such thinking. No matter how much new money, new funding and new sources of income are uncovered, electoral defeat has remained constant: a 44% failure rate in the re-election cycle. Those who are actually re-elected to parliament count on other means than the distribution of loose cash. Proper attendance in parliament, strong advocates of certain policies like women's presence in decision making positions, job creation for the nation's youth, a strengthened school system, quality health care, etc. is the more important factor for re-election. Demanding more and more CDF money and seeking new funding sources has proven to be less successful in re-election bids.