National Assembly - The African Mirror

Mar

2024

South Africa’s election management body has done a good job for 30 years: here’s why

MORE than in previous elections, South Africa’s Electoral Commission (IEC) will be tested to the hilt in this year’s national and provincial elections on 29 May. For the first time in 30 years, the electoral majority of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) is in jeopardy. This makes the upcoming poll the most consequential one since 1994 when the country commenced with its democratisation. The electoral commission’s tasks are to enforce the rules of the electoral game and the parties’ ethical conduct. It must also be the dispute resolution champion and ensure that the election is free and fair. These…

Mar

2024

By OLIVIA KUMWENDA-MTAMBO and NELLIE PEYTON

South Africa’s ANC wary of post-election coalition, says it ‘won’t work’

NEWS

SOUTH Africa's ruling African National Congress (ANC) party is betting on retaining its parliamentary majority in a May election and is not in talks with other parties on a possible coalition government, the party's deputy secretary general said. South Africans will go to polls on May 29 to elect a new National Assembly, which will then choose the next president. "We will not go to war having accepted defeat. We are going to war to win," ANC veteran Nomvula Mokonyane told Reuters in an interview, adding that the party was aware that "stakes are high because not everybody is comfortable…

Feb

2024

By ANAIT MIRIDZHANIAN

South Africa to hold national and provincial elections on May 29

NEWS

SOUTH Africa will hold national and provincial elections on May 29, President Cyril Ramaphosa's office said. The elections are expected to be the most competitive since the end of the apartheid system. Political analysts widely predict that the governing African National Congress (ANC) party will lose its parliamentary majority for the first time since 1994, with record power cuts, poor service delivery and high levels of unemployment among voter complaints. South Africans will elect a new National Assembly as well as the provincial legislature in each of the country's nine provinces before the National Assembly elects the president. Ramaphosa, 71,…

Feb

2024

By The African Mirror

What is happening in Senegal and could tensions escalate?

NEWS

SENEGAL'S parliament voted to postpone a presidential election from February 25 to December 15, extending President Macky Sall's mandate in an unprecedented break with the West African country's democratic tradition. Amid widespread public outcry to the postponement, some opposition lawmakers tried to block proceedings in the National Assembly building until security forces intervened and forced them off the central dais, allowing the vote to proceed. The contested bill was eventually passed by 105 members of parliament (MPs) in the 165-seat Assembly. WHY DID PRESIDENT SALL CALL FOR A POSTPONEMENT? Sall, who is not standing for re-election and has reached the constitutional limit…

Jul

2023

By OMOLOLU FAGBADEBO

Four priorities for Nigeria’s newly elected national assembly

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

NIGERIA’S National Assembly – the 10th since independence – was inaugurated on 13 June 2023. It has two arms: the Senate and the House of Representatives. The 109 senators and 360 representatives were elected on 25 February 2023. Godswill Akpabio was elected Senate president and Tajudeen Abass House of Representatives speaker. Its primary responsibility is lawmaking for the effective administration of the state. In Nigeria, the power of the National Assembly’s two houses to legislate is enshrined in section 4 of the 1999 constitution. The constitution also enables the National Assembly to scrutinise and monitor executive activities. Sections 88 and…

Dec

2022

By The African Mirror

How to impeach a president: Ramaphosa case puts new rules to the test in South Africa

SPECIAL FEATURES: ANALYSIS

SOUTH Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa faces possible impeachment in the country’s parliament over the illegal stashing of thousands of US dollars at his farm in 2020. This is not the first time there’s been a threat of impeachment of a president in post-democratic South Africa. His scandal-prone predecessor, Jacob Zuma, survived an impeachment vote in 2017 over the illegal use of public money to renovate his private residence. There is, however, a difference in the process being followed this time. It is the first since parliament adopted rules to guide the process for the impeachment of a president in 2018,…

Oct

2022

By The African Mirror

Nigeria’s 2023 budget is a plan of despair and won’t change the tempo of the economy

BUSINESS

NIGERIA’S 2023 budget, recently presented by President Muhammadu Buhari to the National Assembly, has generated a furore. There are concerns about the impact on the country’s rising deficits and debt, as well as its failure to address some of the structural deficiencies behind declining revenues and rising inflation. The 2023 budget expenditure of 20.51 trillion naira (US$43.7 billion) is the highest ever. More than half of this is money the government doesn’t have and has to be financed with new debt. This will mean that the country exceeds the 3% of GDP threshold stipulated by the Fiscal Responsibility Act of…