Legislature's clout severely under utilised

One of the more significant changes wrought by our Constitution is the power shift from the Executive to the Legislature in budget making. There had been some subtle assaults on the Executive's power over budget prior to 2010; the most significant being the passage of the 2003 Constituency Development Fund Act which automatically reserved 2.5 per cent of the budget for MPs to manage. The passage of the Government Financial Management Act in 2004 and the institutional strengthening of the Parliamentary Budget Office marked a significant step in liberalising the public finance management architecture.

Parliament's budget approval role was otherwise a formality, the numbers presented by the Treasury were always fait accompli. Nothing emphasised this power arrangement more than the constitutional restriction of Parliament introducing any money bill on the floor unless it had been consented to by the President himself! This position was fundamentally revised by the new Constitution which made Parliament the pre-eminent actor in the budget process. In Article 221 for example, the Executive presents budget estimates to Parliament by April 30 to give Parliament time to collect views from the public, make adjustments to the estimates as it deems necessary, and pass the revised budget by the end of the financial year.