Fifteen new Members of Parliament (MPs) were sworn in by the Governor on Monday. However, five of them are expected to become Ministers and will be replaced by the next-highest vote-getters on their respective parties’ candidate lists.
The people’s representatives in principle took office for the usual four-year term, although recent experience has shown this can change in the event of an early election like the one just held after only two years. Hopefully that won’t again be the case any time soon, because it indicates undesirable political instability.
An often-heard complaint is that legislators don’t really make many of their own laws from scratch. One of the main reasons is said to be that the necessary knowledge for such is concentrated in Government, which consequently ends up producing most draft national ordinances, amendments, etc.
In the past it was even suggested to, for example, reduce Parliament’s travel budget and use the money for hiring a legislation expert, but this never took place. Still, there are other ways to resolve the issue.
Funding is obviously limited, but every fraction has the right to appoint a full-time assistant. Instead of using this function to reward campaign supporters, the parties involved should consider giving the job to persons who actually know about legal matters and how to prepare so-called initiative members’ bills.
Doing so would be a welcome sign of maturity within the local political establishment that voters no doubt can appreciate.
