Report of the Portfolio Committee on Public Enterprises on the "Strengthening Legislatures in Response to Globalisation and International Security Issues" Conference, dated 16 March 2005:

The Chairperson of the Portfolio Committee on Public Enterprises, having attended the "Strengthening Legislatures in Response to Globalisation and International Security Issues" Conference in Philippines, on 2 and 3 December 2004, reports as follows:

A. Aims of the Conference

1. The Chairperson of the Public Enterprises Portfolio Committee, Yunus Carrim, was invited to offer a paper and chair a session of the "Strengthening Legislatures in Response to Globalisation and International Security Issues" Conference held in Manila, Philippines on 2 and 3 December 2004. The Conference was organised by Centre for Legislative Development, International.

2. In view of the effort and cost in getting to the conference and the fact that it was for just two days, the chairperson negotiated with parliament to also spend two extra days on a study tour of the electricity and transport public utilities in Philippines and meet with MPs from Philippines to get a sense of how they fulfill their oversight role in respect of public utilities.

3. Essentially, the Conference aimed to increase awareness of the impact of globalisation and international security issues, post – 9/11, on the practice of legislative oversight and on the nature of parliamentary democracies. The Conference aimed to encourage greater co-operation among MPs and other stakeholders across the world to strengthen legislatures to respond to the challenges of globalisation and international security issues.

4. The Conference included sessions on:

Balancing Security and Democracy
Legislative Awareness of the WTO (World Trade Organisation)
Legislative Sensitivity to Gender and Globalisation
Usefulness of Legislative Support Services
Capacity of Legislative Committees
Effectiveness of Legislative Oversight
Adequacy of Budgetary Allocation
A New Agenda for Legislative Strengthening

5. There were 110 participants from 21 countries. The majority were MPs. Those who participated included parliamentary staff, academics and representatives of capacity-building organisations, NGOs and donor agencies.

B. Key Issues

1. The historical, political, cultural and other context of the parliaments from which the MPs present at the conference came differed. The MPs came from different parliamentary committees. The speakers represented a cross-section of the ideological spectrum. Despite the diversity of the participants, a fair degree of consensus emerged on what the key challenges are and what the broad responses to them should be.

2. Participants generally felt that there is an increasingly close relationship between globalisation and international security issues. There was general agreement that governments are increasingly taking major decisions on globalisation and international security issues without legislatures exercising effective oversight of these decisions. The threat of terrorism can be effectively tackled without eroding human rights and fundamental principles of democracy – and legislatures have a crucial role to ensure this. Legislatures, it was stressed, need to be strengthened to a play a more effective oversight role over globalisation and international security issues.

3. Legislators, it was felt, need to be sensitive to the manner in which globalisation and security issues have started to challenge traditional concepts and interpretations of what constitutes national sovereignty, democracy and human rights.

4. Legislators have a major responsibility to pursue the state’s obligation to protect its citizens from all kinds of threats to their physical security and well-being while, at the same time, ensuring that civil liberties are respected and upheld in all circumstances.

5. Legislators need to recognise that global and local responses to international security issues have to be sensitive to the historical, cultural and socio-political context of countries as sovereign and democratic.

6. There is a need, it was acknowledged, to better understand the historical, structural, cultural and ideological roots of international terrorism, and to seek both short-term and long-term solutions that do not polarise people on ethnic-religious-racial lines. While the "positive" sides of globalisation tend to undermine the threat of terrorism, the "negative" sides tend to exacerbate the threat. Reducing the security threat is difficult without greater economic and social development of the developing world and the reduction of global inequalities, but, at the same time, development and the reduction of global inequalities are difficult without reducing the security threat. Obviously, reducing global inequalities will not automatically reduce the threat of terrorism – there are major cultural-religious-ethnic-ideological issues at stake – but it will be a major contributing factor.

7. There was general consensus that globalisation and the post-9/11 global response to terrorism were serving to attenuate the role of parliaments - and yet strong parliaments are needed for countries to reap the benefits of globalisation and counter the threat of terrorism. While recognising some of the sensitivities, the Conference felt that it is crucial that the public actively participates in decision-making on basic globalisation and security issues.

C. Challenges in Effective Oversight in South Africa

1. The Chairperson of the Public Enterprises Portfolio Committee presented a paper on "Challenges in Effective Parliamentary Oversight in a Developmental Democracy: The Public Enterprises Portfolio Committee".

2. Among the key issues dealt with in the paper are the following:

The impact of globalisation on the democratic transition in South Africa.
The activist potential of parliamentary committees in South Africa.
Challenges in effective parliamentary oversight of state-owned enterprises.
Ways of strengthening legislatures in response to globalisation and international security issues.

3. Key aspects of the paper dealt with issues raised in the Public Enterprises Portfolio Committee’s "Report on the Annual Reports of the Department of Public Enterprises and the State-Owned Enterprises ", published in the ATC of 22 February 2005.

D. Ways of Strengthening Legislatures

1. Among the issues to be considered in strengthening legislatures in response to globalisation and international security issues are the following:

MPs and parliamentary staff need to be more aware of globalisation and international security issues, especially as they impact on their respective countries. The gender aspects of these issues also need to be fully understood.
MPs and parliamentary staff need to drastically improve their technical and political understanding of these issues.
Parliamentary committees in the economic and security clusters need to co-operate more within and across clusters and across both Houses, including by sharing information and organising joint briefings and public hearings.
Adequate budgetary and other resources have to be allocated by parliaments to committees so that they can effectively fulfill their oversight roles.
Parliamentary committees need to scrutinise the impact of these issues on the budgets approved by parliaments.
National parliaments need to co-operate more with state/provincial and local government on these issues.
Parliaments need to contribute to empowering the public on these issues and encouraging them to actively participate in communicating their views to the parliament.
Parliaments need to strengthen their links with civil society organisations and individual experts.
Parliaments need an enhanced role in oversight of trade and security agreements negotiated by governments. Parliaments need to consider a more active say in decisions about macro-economic policies decisions, which are usually made by governments in consultation with international multi-lateral institutions. One possible approach is to require legislative approval of representatives to multi-lateral institutions.
But the pursuit of a more effective oversight role for parliament does not mean that parliaments need to be crudely confrontational. Some aspects of globalisation and security issues are better dealt with at the level of the executive, others at the level of parliament. There needs to be some broad consensus on this, and on the nature of both oversight and co-operation between legislature and executive. In the context of globalisation, there is also a need for the legislature and executive to creatively co-operate in the national interest.
Regional, continental and international inter-parliamentary forums should be more effectively used to tackle these issues. These organisations should also seek to be represented in multi-lateral institutions, where appropriate, and link more effectively with trans-national civil society movements.

E. Public Utilities in the Philippines

1. The Committee Chairperson met with representatives of the electricity and railways public utilities of Philippines, the Philippines-South Africa Business Council and two MPs from committees dealing with public utilities. There is no South African embassy in Philippines; there was very limited time to organise a study tour programme; and those who tried to assist were, unfortunately, not able to do enough; so the programme turned out to be limited in value.

2. In general, public utilities in the Philippines have been undergoing major transformation over the past fifteen years; they are increasingly in private hands through privatisation or in other ways. The stakeholders consulted had differing views on the effects of privatisation in the Philippines, but among the issues raised were:

A privatisation programme must fall within an overall national development plan for the country, and should not simply be embarked upon to reduce the budget deficit.
The contracts have to be carefully crafted to ensure that the private sector buyers fulfill the obligations defined by the state.
Foreign investors should be brought in in a way that does not sacrifice the sovereignty of a country, and there should be clearly-defined obligations to empower local companies.
Most national regulators are too weak to exercise their roles effectively. Privatisation programmes should not be effected until regulators are capacitated.
The effects of privatisation are difficult to tell. There seem to be mixed outcomes; in some cases ordinary people have benefited, in others not.

3. The stakeholders met were very impressed when informed of the South African model of free basic water and electricity services and the extent of delivery.

F. Conclusion

1. It was very useful to attend the Conference, and much was gained. However the separate study tour programme was disappointing and not especially productive – but there was little, in the circumstances, that could be done about this.

2. Clearly, there is a lot of overlap between the debates we are having in our parliament about strengthening our oversight role and the debates in other parliaments. Interestingly though, our committee system is much more powerful than that of most other parliaments represented at the Conference, and even has constitutional protection, and we might want to exchange more with these parliaments on our perspectives on and models and experiences of parliamentary committees. The discussions within our own portfolio committee on parliamentary oversight of state-owned enterprises seem to be unique to our own country – and this is perhaps related to the extent to which the state in our country controls major entities providing basic services, our current state-led investment path and the model of the developmental state we are seeking to implement. But it is likely, given the impact of globalisation, that other developing countries will, over time, also follow aspects of our overall path, and the debates we are currently having in our Committee will probably be of relevance to them. Essentially, the Conference suggested, once again, how important it is for our country to have closer links with other African and developing countries. We have both lessons to offer and to learn.