Accountability and COVID-19
The guidance note discusses the opportunities for parliaments to reinvigorate their ways of working to win back trust and revitalize their mandate as key democratic institutions. In the immediate to medium term, this opportunity lies in providing accountability for government-led response and recovery, and ensuring that the unprecedented amounts taxpayers’ money injected in the economy are not left to governments’ discretion. In the long-term, with the world facing perhaps a final chance to recommit to the 2030 Agenda, the note discusses how parliaments can exercise stewardship over people’s visions for a more equal, just, secure and sustainable society, determining and qualifying their needs and ensuring that these are met through government action during the times ahead.
This note identifies the role and opportunity for parliaments:
- Acting on behalf of people as an informed critic, sounding board, and partner in governments’ visions for a more equal, just, and sustainable society beyond recovery, towards 2030.
- Win back trust through finding new ways of working—on behalf of people—to hold governments to account for the quality of pandemic response and recovery efforts.
- Critical role of elected representatives viap arliamentary processes in the brokering of a renewed and fairer social contract, guided by the public interest and the principle of leaving no one behind.