VIPYA HARAWA SACKED AS ACTING CLERK OF THE PAN AFRICAN PARLIAMENT

VIPYA  HARAWA

The President of the Pan African Parliament (PAP) Hon. Roger Nkodo Dang has terminated the appointment of Mr. Vipya Harawa as the acting Clerk of the Parliament on grounds of none performance. President Dang stated in the termination letter that Mr. Vipya had been given the opportunity to improve when his acing appointment was renewed for six months but had failed to improve.

It will be recalled that the proceedings of the just concluded Sixth Ordinary Session of the Fourth Parliament exposed several administrative lapses that put the competence of the acting clerk as then head of the secretariat into question.

For example, there were instances where parliamentarians complained of non-availability of the Order Paper as at the commencement of the day’s legislative business. On a particular incident that was captured on You Tube, a parliamentarian angrily tore the Order Paper given to him because it had a wrong date on it. As it turned out, there were different versions of the Order Paper for the same day but with different dates. That was inexcusable.

Rule 37(2) of the PAP Rules of Procedure states that the Clerk shall prepare the Order Paper setting out the sequence of proceedings and order of business and shall circulate it at least four hours before the commencement of the session. The use of the word “shall” in the above Rule implies that the intended action is mandatory.  Mr. Harawa should have known better.

Another period when Harawa manifested incompetence was the presentation of the Activity Report. According to the Draft Programme for the Sixth Ordinary Session earlier  circulated to parliamentarians, the Activity Report covering the period October 2017 to May 2018 was supposed to have been presented on Tuesday May 8, 2018 but was postponed to Tuesday May 15 because the Report was not ready. PAP President Dang explained to the parliamentarians that he had pleaded with the Clerk to ensure that the said Activity Report was ready for presentation and even told the Clerk that he (President) would approve the engagement of additional ad hoc staff to ensure the completion of the job if necessary.

On May15 when the President rose to present the Activity Report, PAP parliamentarians protested that they were only handed the report on their way to the Plenary that morning and had not had time to go through it so as to be able to make informed contributions. They therefore requested that the presentation be suspended to allow parliamentarians to go through the report.

PAP PRESIDENT ROGER NKODO DANG

PAP President Dang explained that the Bureau had met, reviewed and approved the presentation of the Activity Report on May 15 and sent same to the Clerk for production and circulation to members and called on Mr. Harawa to explain to the parliamentarians why the Report could not have been circulated earlier. After some flimsy excuses, Mr. Harawa accepted responsibility for the mistake and apologized.

On Saturday May 12 when newly re-elected PAP President appeared at the Western Region Caucus meeting to thank the parliamentarians for their support, he was questioned about some of the noticeable administrative lapses noticed during plenary. In response, President Dang told them that he also was baffled at Mr. Harawa’s conducted which fell short of expectation and promised that the new Bureau would address the matter.

Any discerning mind would therefore have been able to see the handwriting and that it was a matter of time before Harawa was shown the way out having failed to give a good account of himself even when he was still on probation.  Could it be argued that the duties and responsibilities of that office may have been beyond his capacity?.