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Senior Reporter
The envisaged Sadc Parliament should be able to support Sadc Summit by advancing the policies and agreements of member countries through parliamentary processes, Speaker of the National Assembly Advocate Jacob Mudenda said last week during the 50th plenary assembly of the SADC Parliamentary Forum.
At its 41st Summit of Sadc Heads of State and Government held in Malawi, Sadc resolved to transform the Sadc Parliamentary Forum into a regional parliament.
“The SADC Parliament will be birthed under the direction and superintendence of the Sadc Summit as one of its organs once the transformation protocol is ratified by the summit,” Advocate Mudenda said.
“Such an institution does not seek to exist outside the realm of the mother body, namely, the Sadc Summit. Neither does it seek to challenge any future decisions of the Summit.
“Instead, it seeks to support and popularise the decisions of the summit by advancing its protocols through parliamentary processes. We, as the regional legislature to be, are fully in agreement with the envisaged consequential amendments to the proposed SADC Treaty as shall be amended.”
He added that the proposed parliament will not exercise oversight on, for example, on the Sadc draft legal instruments and its annual budgets so long as the summit has not yet been transformed into a supra-regional body.
“It, therefore, will be presumptuous for the Sadc Parliament to evolve into a decision-making authority over Sadc Summit operations,” he added.
The regional Parliament will strive for integration premised on regional economic development and shared parliamentary processes that ride on best practices from member parliaments.
He said successful transitioning to a regional parliament need an enduring consultative framework between executives and legislatures within Sadc as a guiding maxim to ensure that unintended outcomes may not find their way into the final regional parliament architecture.
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