The Vice-President, Dr Mohamed Gharib Bilal, is expected to flag-off the 34th Southern African Development Community (SADC) Parliamentary Forum’s Plenary Assembly being held in Arusha under the theme, “Benchmarking the Conduct and Assessment of Elections in Southern Africa.”
Vice-President, Dr Mohamed Gharib Bilal
The Speaker for the National Assembly, Ms Anne Makinda, whose parliament plays host to the event, stated that the SADC forum was already ongoing but Dr Bilal would officiate at its opening session on Sunday.
The SADC-PF has attracted participants from fourteen Southern African countries including Angola, Botswana, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC),Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland and Seychelles. Other delegates are coming from South Africa, Zambia, Zimbabwe and the host country, Tanzania.
At the forum they will address issues related to democratic elections and good governance in the region. Makinda used the occasion to once again decry little representation of women in African parliaments, challenging women in the continent to come forward in running for various legislative posts.
The Southern African Development Community’s Parliamentary Forum (SADC-PF), according to Speaker Makinda, is an inter-parliamentary institution.
It shares all rights and privileges enjoyed by other institutions of the SADC. The SADC PF was formed in July 1996 but it was officially approved, in accordance with Article 9 (2) of the SADC Treaty, by the SADC Summit held in Blantyre, Malawi on September 8, 1997.
Apart from the SADC PF’s Democracy and Governance Programme, the organisation has four other task areas, namely Parliamentary Capacity Development, Regional Development and Integration, HIV/AIDS and Public Health as well as Gender Equality and Empowerment Programmes.
The Plenary Assembly of SADC PF taking place in Arusha is the highest Policy-making and deliberative organ where all the 15 national parliaments of SADC are represented.
The Forum meets twice a year to make policy decisions and recommendations to the SADC Summit of Heads of State and Government on various issues affecting the SADC region.
Each member parliament appoints a presiding officer and four representatives (MPs), reflecting the gender and political composition of the parliament, in line with the constitution of the Forum. The executive committee is the management board of the institution.
The SADC-PF secretariat is headed by a secretary general. The SADC PF has 29 established positions; 24 of which are currently filled and two of these are volunteers. From this total, 7 staff members are women.
By MARC NKWAME, Tanzania Daily News
