PARLIAMENT OF SIERRA LEONE

5 Years Strategy Explainer Podcast

The Parliament of Sierra Leone, like many legislative bodies around the world, plays a crucial role in the governance and decision-making processes of the country. The essence of the Parliament’s 5-year strategy explainer podcast on YouTube lies in its commitment to transparency, accountability, and public engagement. This podcast serves as a platform for the Parliament to communicate its strategic goals, initiatives, and progress to the citizens of Sierra Leone and beyond.

Transparency and Accountability

One of the key aspects highlighted in the Parliament’s 5-year strategy explainer podcast is its commitment to transparency and accountability. This transparency also allows citizens to hold their representatives accountable for their actions and decisions.

Public Engagement

Another essential element of the Parliament’s strategy explainer podcast is public engagement. Through this platform, the Parliament seeks to bridge the gap between lawmakers and the general population by providing insights into the legislative process, upcoming bills, committee activities, and other relevant topics.

Strategic Goals and Initiatives

The podcast likely delves into the specific strategic goals and initiatives outlined in the Parliament’s 5-year plan. These may include efforts to strengthen democratic institutions, promote good governance practices, enhance legislative capacity, address key policy issues such as healthcare, education, infrastructure development, and economic growth.

EPISODE 1 – INTRODUCTION

EPISODE 2 – OUR STRATEGIC GOALS

EPISODE 3 – GUIDING PRINCIPLES OF THE PARLIAMENT OF SIERRA LEONE

EPISODE 4 - OUR STRATEGIC FRAMEWORK

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The Parliament of Sierra Leone 5 years strategy explainer podcast is created by the Centre for Strategy and Parliamentary Studies – CSPS, a specialized office of Parliament. Your engagement and interest in understanding the strategic direction of the Parliament of Sierra Leone is greatly appreciated. Stay tuned for more insightful content from CSPS!.

EPISODE ONE

Introduction to the 5 Years Strategy

The 1991 Constitution of Sierra Leone vests legislative power in the Parliament.

The 5th Parliament of the Second Republic of Sierra Leone, established after the March 2018 elections, consists of 146 seats: 132 members directly elected and 14 paramount chiefs. The 132 members were elected from single member constituencies and the 14 Paramount Chiefs from 14 Districts of Sierra Leone. Paramount Chiefs have been a mainstay of Parliament since the 1924 Ransford Slater's Constitution Of the 146 MPs, 18 (12%) are women and three (2%) are independents. There are four political parties currently represented in Parliament. None, including the ruling party, has a working majority.

The four political parties and three independent members in Parliament include the All-People’s Congress (APC) with 58 seats, the Sierra Leone Peoples Party (SLPP) with 59 seats, Coalition for Change (C4C) with 8 seats; the National Grand Coalition (NGC) with 4 seats; and three independent candidates.

The Parliament is headed by the Speaker who is elected by the Members of Parliament. The qualifications for candidates for Speakers include: (1) Members of Parliament with at least five years of service in Parliament; (2) Persons qualified to be Members of Parliament and who had served as such for at least ten years; and (3) Persons who are not younger than forty years. (Amendment of section 79 of Act No 6 of 1991). In the absence of the Speaker, an elected Deputy Speaker presides over the sittings of the House.

The variety of backgrounds in the 5th Parliament is a great opportunity for promoting and strengthening good governance in Sierra Leone. The current Parliament is exceptional because no party forms a simple majority. While the absence of a clear majority predisposes the Parliament to chaos and stalemate it is not necessarily destined to face such an outcome. Rather, the variety of backgrounds is a unique opportunity for building compromise, consensus and dialogue. The current scenario is conducive for the leaders in the Sierra Leone Parliament to build a strong Parliament by tolerating each other despite their political affiliation or interest and to encourage inclusivity and promote plurality and diversity in public policy.

It is expected that this Strategic Plan (2021-2025) would provide the opportunity for key stakeholders in Parliament to work together with a common goal to advance parliamentary democracy in the country through the implementation of the strategic goals articulated in the Plan.

EPISODE TWO

Our Strategic Goals

The 2021-2025 Strategic Plan builds on the previous Strategic Plan (2016-2019). The current plan is anchored on four strategic goals - following on the achievements of the last few years and are intended to shape the long-term development of Parliament. The goals and the corresponding strategic objectives have been chosen in view of the current trajectory of the Parliament of Sierra Leone in comparison to other parliaments. The goals are framed with the aim of helping Parliament achieve its vision of being a beacon of democracy and good governance for the people of Sierra Leone.

The goals are:

Building the institutional capacity of Parliament:

There are three major functions of Parliaments: lawmaking, oversight and representation. In this Strategic Plan for 2021-2025, the Parliament of Sierra Leone recognizes the importance of prioritizing its efforts in setting up an efficient institution to serve as the vehicle for achieving all the other strategic objectives under the Plan.

Strengthening lawmaking:

Globally, Parliaments perform three core functions: to represent citizens interests, to pass laws and to oversee the actions of the government. The legislative function includes the introduction of new laws as well as amending, approving or rejecting draft laws from the Executive. This function is strongly linked to the representation function because the authority of Parliament emanates from the will of the people.

Strengthening oversight:

The role of Parliament in ensuring oversight over the Executive is a significant constitutional mandate. The accomplishment of this role extends from the approval of proposed government development policy/plan, the national budget and the monitoring of the implementation of the budget. Through this function, Parliament ensures accountability in government.

Strengthen representation and relationships with citizens:

Members of Parliament are elected to represent the interest of their constituents in the legislature. A representative Parliament advocates for the needs of citizens and ensures citizens' participation in its activities. Members have the duty to inform constituents and, actively involve them in parliamentary processes and above all, be accountable to their constituents.

Resource Mobilization:

The Resource Mobilization approach in this Strategic Plan, is intended to design a strategic approach to identifying, cultivating and eventually soliciting financial support to enable the Parliament of Sierra Leone delivers on its mandate to the citizens of Sierra Leone during the next five years - 2021-2025. It addresses the most effective ways in which the Parliament can mobilize resources necessary to ensure the goals set out in its Strategic Plan are achieved. This includes donor identification, relationship cultivation and eventual resource solicitation.

These goals are informed by the need to establish an efficient and effective institution that is positioned to help Parliament and its Members achieve their triple functions of lawmaking, oversight and representation and its Members achieve their triple functions of lawmaking, oversight and representation.

EPISODE THREE

Guiding Principles of the Parliament of Sierra Leone

The 2021 to 2025 Strategic Plan is shaped by rigorous knowledge and deep reflections from the world of Parliaments. It also takes into account the nature of the 5th Parliament of Sierra Leone faced with challenges in governance. The Parliament of Sierra Leone has a heavy burden to provide leadership and political solutions to the country's challenges. Finally, the Strategic Plan is shaped by guiding principles that inform work on Parliament.

Our Vision: We envision an independent and autonomous state institution providing effective legislative and representative support through MPs to the people of Sierra Leone.

Our Mission: Making government work for the people, by giving a voice to the voiceless through lawmaking, transparency, accountability and equitable distribution of resources.

Our Core Values

The Vision and Mission of the Parliament of Sierra Leone are anchored on several core values that guide Parliament as an institution as well as every single Member of Parliament. The Core Values of the Parliament of Sierra Leone are:

Accountability: Parliament will strive to act in a fair and equitable manner, ensuring that the needs of citizens are addressed.
Inclusiveness: Parliament will strive to take into account all shades of opinion in every decision the House makes.
Gender Mainstreaming: Parliament will recognize and value the diversity between men and women in legislation and policy.
Transparency: Parliament will act openly and make all its activities and decisions accessible to citizens.
Integrity: Parliament will be guided by high ethical and moral standards in the discharge of its duties.
Impartiality: Parliament will be objective at all times and guided by the interests of all citizens.
Professionalism: Parliament will strive to achieve the highest level of skills and competence in discharging its duties.
Respect: Parliament will value the views and opinions of all citizens at all times.

EPISODE FOUR

Our Frameworks

Over the years, the approach to strategic planning for parliaments has focused broadly on institutional capacity and the traditional functions of parliaments. This approach has lumped together the strategies for developing parliaments. In effect, both institutional/organizational components and constitutional functions are tackled collectively with the intent of ensuring that the performance of Parliament is improved. A different approach is proposed here. It is an approach that evolves from a more nuanced appreciation of the historical trajectory of parliamentary growth both from an institutional and functional perspective.

The approach would outline the institutional and functional components of Parliaments according to the following three areas of growth: foundational, transitional and maturity. The proposed approach is consistent with the commonly used typology of parliamentary capacity enhancement. The logic of this approach is to provide a more realistic, practical and manageable process for developing parliamentary capacity. Admittedly, all Parliaments exhibit functionally unique characteristics. However, Parliaments are not particularly different from other institutions whose evolution occurs along different trajectories; planned or unplanned.

The relevance of this novel approach is to produce a Strategic Plan that is fit for purpose and one that is relevant to the current contextual needs of the Parliament of Sierra Leone. Emphasis will be placed on the foundational and transitional pathways that shape the objective of improving the performance of the Parliament of Sierra Leone over the next five years.