The Role of Committee Chairs in Strengthening Executive

The Role of Committee Chairs in Strengthening Executive Oversight and Accountability: My Experience as a Committee Chair Amina Abdalla, CBS Former Chair Committee on Environment and Natural REsources

Why should you focus on Committee leadership? • Committee of Parliament are said to be the engines that drives Parliaments -it therefore follows that Committee Chairs are the drivers of Parliamentary Business. • Presidential systems of governance centralizes power to control legislative narratives to committees and their leadership. • Committee Chairs can almost single handedly strengthen or suppress executive accountability • Cultivating and nurture good working relationships with your assembly is not meant to subvert accountability but in appreciation that • politics is more perception than reality –if you are to avoid being ambushed by impeachment and or manufactured scandals

Executive Conduct that affect oversight and accountability 1. Executive resistance to proactive oversight, unpreparedness and non-adherence to timelines 2. Lack of, or poor ownership by the Executive of technical, budgetary and or oversight products and processes being handled by assemblies 3. Underestimating the role of public participation especially by organized groups 4. Fallacy of political neutrality in operating in a political environment 5. Executive reaction to oversight questions 6. Narrow scope of engagement –not all problems are budget deficit related

Recommendations 1. Strengthen County Assembly to avoid an adversary relationship with other arms of government 2. Proactively lobby for high Caliber of the overall legislative leadership (including Committee Chairs and Members) 3. cultivated a cordial working relationship with the Legislature 4. Improve quality of county civil service –County AG a great move 5. Politics 101 for your CEC • We must as a country move from quantitative to qualitative oversight