IPU should be made more potent: Delegates

JAKARTA (JP): While noting some merits of their biannual meetings, delegates attending the 104th Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) conference here on Thursday stressed the need to find channels which could make the forum more effective.

Interviewed separately by The Jakarta Post on Thursday, delegates maintained that the biannual conference was a useful arena to exchange ideas and information with their counterparts from around the world.

However they also conceded that at times the range of topics and discussions were so varied that it made some delegates inattentive.

This attitude was evident in the fact that much of the general session of the conference which began on Sunday was bare of delegates.

"It depends on the delegates. But for me it's still useful to share ideas and information," Anna Zaborska, a delegate from Slovak Republic, said.

Zaborska said as a representative of the people, the delegates should convey to their government the results of the IPU conference.

But she also admitted that some delegates did not seem to care much about the conference and regarded themselves as tourists.

Mart Nutt from the Estonian delegation remarked that delegates often left the plenary session when the topics presented were not relevant to their respective countries.

"So many topics were discussed here. So if they were not related (to their countries) they would leave the plenary session," Nutt of the Pro Patria Union ruling party, remarked.

Nutt remarked that even if the subject was distant to their country, they should courteously have at least one delegate to sit through the proceedings to listen to the other delegates' speeches.

Some 1,200 representatives from about 120 countries are attending the conference which ends on Friday.

Seppo Kanerva from Finland admitted that the IPU conference could not do more than exchange ideas and information, and at the most, issue resolutions.

"Only a little can be done by the conference. We have different problems," Karneva of the Kansanedustaja party remarked.

He said the IPU as an institution probably could not be strengthened to have a more political influence, such as the United Nations, as it did not represent governments or institutions which have executive powers.

But Nutt disagreed, reasserting that the weakness of the IPU was not caused by parliaments being prostrate to the executive but more to the fact that national parliaments by nature are more focused on their individual state problems.

Separately, the speaker of the State Duma, the Russian legislature, said on Thursday that the IPU could be more effective if all resolutions adopted in the IPU conference could also be discussed thoroughly by their respective national parliaments.

Noting the importance of parliamentary power in achieving democracy, Gennady Seleznev said that parliaments should have the authority to control the executive powers and see to it that the policies of their governments benefit the people in general.

"Parliaments are created by the people, and hence they have the right to control the executive powers," Seleznev said, adding that with the ongoing process of globalization, parliaments have even a greater role to play.

He said the IPU members need to work more closely with the United Nations so that they can build a new world order on a multipolar base.

"There are also negative aspects of globalization, especially the kind of globalization pushed forward by the United States," he told a group of Indonesian journalists at the Mulia hotel in Senayan, South Jakarta.

He noted that as the U.S. had not participated in the IPU activities over the past three years, the current IPU conference had decided to suspend Washington's voting rights and its membership in the union will be excluded unless it pays its dues by next April.

"I personally would like to see the U.S. remain in the IPU so that it can listen to the voices of parliaments in the world. Hopefully, after the November (presidential) election, the U.S. will renew its IPU membership," added Seleznev, who left for his home country on Thursday afternoon.(ego/jun)