MPs in Tanzania: Did they perform? :: Sauti za Wananchi :: Publications

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An important question for any citizen is: how did my MP represent my interests in Parliament? One way to assess performance of MPs is to look at the number of interventions they make in Bunge.

A new brief titled Did they work for us? Assessing two years of Bunge data 2010-2012, produced by Twaweza in association with the Centre for Economic Prosperity (CEP), analyses data, available on the Parliament website, on individual MPs’ activity during parliamentary sessions. Parliament is the cornerstone of any democracy, representing voters in their relationship with the state. Twaweza and CEP are providing an assessment of MPs’ performances in total, by party, per MP and per intervention type.

The analysis shows that MPs from parties with less seats tend to make the most interventions on average. The assessment considers interventions made by MPs during the first two years of the 2010 – 2015 parliamentary term. MPs can make three different types of interventions: basic questions, supplementary questions and contributions. For all of these, TLP and NCCR-MAGEUZI with only one and five MPs each respectively, showed the highest figures per MP. However, excluding the small parties with less than 5 percent representation in Bunge, Chadema is the most active, followed by CUF and CCM.

Most Active MPs