The House of Assembly (HOA) Register of Interests is to be made public by the end of the month and Members will be required to file all interests on time or they will be penalized for failing to adhere to the mandatory requirement.
This is according to expressed deadlines outlined in the National Unity Government’s proposal which was recently approved by the United Kingdom Government.
The Register of Interests is a record kept of the financial interests of the House of Assembly Members.
As part of the Government’s immediate goal to implement the Commission of Inquiry Report recommendations as a democratic front, they proposed to address each recommendation by a specified deadline.
Recommendations B2, B3, B4 and B5 from the Report all address some of the critical issues relating to the Register of Interests that were highlighted during the COI hearings.
In the proposal, the Government set a deadline date of June 30th to make the Register of Interests system public.
“HOA makes the Register of Interests public under the existing arrangements, while a new system is designed and developed to cover both elected and public officials,” the proposal document stated.
New system to be designed
The proposal also revealed that the Government will be designing a new Register of Interests system for the future.
A similar June 30th deadline was outlined as the date where such plans for the design of the new system should be completed.
The proposal said, “HOA engages the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (CPA) for assistance in designing a new system of registration of interests based on international best practices that will be accompanied by an implementation plan inclusive of costing for the introduction and maintenance of the new system.”
Legislation to be passed and penalties to be enforced
To facilitate the new requirements, the Government stated that the necessary legislation will be passed this month which will also outline some of the penalties that will be enforced for those Members who fail to meet the declaration deadline.
“Failure by a Member to declare his or her interest by the deadline, without a legitimate reason (e.g., incapacitation or serious medical emergency), would trigger automatic suspension for two sittings of the HOA and the withholding of the Member’s salary, followed by the vacating of the Member’s seat should no declaration be made by the end of the House’s session,” the proposal stated.
During the COI hearings in 2021, it was revealed that the majority of legislators had failed to meet the deadline period required for registering their respective interests.
Some legislators failed to register their interests for years at a time, while others omitted some of their interests due to what they described as difficulty in understanding what needed to be registered.