This Legislative Report Card seeks to provide Liberian citizens with accurate, objective, and comprehensive information about their elected leaders on a quarterly basis. It is the ambition of the Liberia Democratic Institute that the Report Card will contribute to greater transparency and, ultimately, greater democratic accountability in Liberia. The Report is based on three areas in which lawmakers have traditional mandate to execute their formal responsibilities in the interests of their constituents and country.

First, the Report Card evaluates each lawmaker on his or her “Constituency Representation”. That is, the number of meetings held with constituents to solicit their views on legislative matters, number of functional constituency offices, attendance, number of times he or she published bills or laws from the legislature in your constituency for information purposes

Second, the Report Card evaluates each lawmaker’s “Law Making Efforts” during the quarter. For instance, the number of bills presented to plenary during the 5^th session, number of those bills passed into law, number and pattern of vote towards those bills, and bills sponsored.

Third, the Report Card evaluates each lawmaker on his or her “Oversight Responsibility” which relates to instances where the lawmaker has requested Ministries and Agencies of government on issues bordering his or her interaction with government ministries and agencies upon who he or she has oversight right or responsibility.

The Report provides a thorough description of each measure and raises a few caveats that are important when considering the performance of lawmakers. It includes the full set of scores for each lawmaker, presented on general report card. Finally, the report describes Legislature’s overall performance relative to its primary and fundamental responsibilities.

During the course of the research, we observed the following issues:

• The current composition of the Legislature, in which all of the 16 local tribes are represented, is a sign of good democratization.


• “Representation”, which is a cardinal objective of the Legislature, is ill-manifested not only in the infrequency of legislators’ visits to, and consultation with, constituencies, but also in fact that most of the lawmakers don’t have active legislative offices in their constituencies. It was therefore difficult for researchers to determine whether lawmakers who stood in plenary sessions and claimed they were speaking for their constituencies were actually articulating their constituents’ aspirations or their personal convictions.


• There is a “Secret Session syndrome” plaguing the transparency and accountability commitment of the National Legislature. This syndrome, which is more prevalent in the Senate, speaks to the tendency where the lawmakers take behind closed doors critical national decision-making processes in an apparent bid to evade public monitoring and observation of how subsequent decisions of the secret deliberations are arrived at; who took what stance and why. Though authorized by the rules of both chambers, most of the secret sessions held by the Legislature, particularly the Senate, were void of state security justifications consistent with best legislative practices.
  
  Examples,


• The passage of the National Investment Act 2009 and the National Investment Commission Act of 2009 and the National Referendum were voted on in closed door in the Senate. However, the National Investment Act of 2009 and National Investment Commission Act of 2009 was voted in open session at the House of Representatives.


• Legislative Committees serve as the nerve-center of a functional Legislature. Our research findings revealed that most legislative committees are neither transparent and effective nor efficient. The criticisms and blames which the Liberian Legislature incur for delays to expeditiously enact crucial laws and take prompt actions and other important decisions are actually a direct spillover from Senate and House Committees which are opaque in nature and don’t lent themselves to monitoring and any form of public evaluation and pressure.

Based on the observations herein, we would like to recommend the following:

• Membership in the National Legislature should be a full time job. At the moment we have observed a number of Legislators who used their absence from plenary sessions to engage in private services of their professional careers at the expense of their legislative responsibilities and functions.
• While we acknowledge the contribution of the International Organizations including National Democratic Institute (NDI), for playing a role in developing the capacity of lawmakers, they should endeavor to provide support in specialized training of members of the Legislature and their key staff persons especially on public policy formulation processes, law research and the raison d’être of legislative entities in so far as the checks and balances which are inherent in our Republican form of Government are concerned.


• The Legislature should review its standing rules on secret sessions in view of making legislative deliberations, particularly the workings of Legislative Committees, more transparent and participatory.


• We observed during this reporting period that there were difficulties in extracting information on legislative proceedings and processes. We therefore recommend that the legislature should endeavor to translate its legislative modernization commitment which seeks among others, to enhance information flow to the public by reducing bureaucratic bottlenecks.

Part 1:
Beyond the legislative veil – see your lawmakers at work

Part 2:
Legislative report card