Landless People's Movement (LPM) Chief Whip Henny Seibeb has warned members of parliament not to set up rules that criminalise outspoken parliamentarians.
Seibeb has urged his peers at a validation meeting in Swakopmund to come up with futuristic rules that will help strengthen the functions of parliament.
Members of the National Assembly have gathered in Swakopmund to review the current rules governing the house.
The last time the rules were reviewed was seven years ago.
"So members at the moment are debating the issue to make sure that we do not have the same challenges we had starting the 7th Parliament, where we took a long time to establish setting up Parliamentary Standing Committees because the consensus was not there. The 7th Parliament brought together 11 political parties in the National Assembly, and coming to an agreement on how we operate with such diverse political views is quite challenging, so we needed to bring these members together so that we could review what is currently in operation," explained Joyce Nakutta, National Assembly Director for Committee Services.
Some of the MPs attending the three-day event, such as Seibeb, highlighted the loopholes in the current standing rules of parliament.
"A dominant system shouldn't be used to try to suppress and criminalise members of parliament that are outspoken, and rules must not be written with a view to dealing with political parties, let's say like LPM. What the speaker did when he lost at the Supreme Court is that they are trying to amend some of the rules to limit even the way that you speak in parliament; even question time with a minister will be controlled in the future, and these are the things. If we find any contradictions, we will not shy away from contacting lawyers. Any rules being created should be futuristic."
Other MPs mentioned the need to amend the rules to increase the number of standing committees to 15, while others wanted clear definitions.
"We proposed that we have to review it and make it bigger, and then in the past, we used to have one member serve on more than four committees, and then we said it was not workable. It's not easy for a member to serve on more than four committees," said Swapo Chief Whip Julius Hambyuka.
"What is there, in theory, is not practical or some things have been left out in the standing rules orders, say, for instance, there's no description of what is a chief whip, what is the official opposition, what are the responsibilities, what is your duty; there's nothing like that in the current rules and orders, so we said these things need to be cleared out," suggested PDM Chief Whip Elma Dienda.
Two LPM leaders were suspended from parliament in 2021 for alleged unruly behaviour, and they won their appeal case in the Supreme Court, mostly because of the vague rules.