Committee: – Stronger democracy

“During Erna Solberg’s tenure as prime minister, there was a shift in power between the government and parliament. The loser is parliament,” a long-time press official wrote Harald Stangel A year ago (Aftenposten May 31, 2021). Five senior lawyers shouted Warning against weakening democracy He demanded a retraction (Morganbladet December 9, 2021).

Fortunately, can not Democracy is being built not only, but also. Last year, it was announced that Red would take the lead. Now the work is beginning to bear fruit.

Back in 2019, Parliament appointed a commission to investigate Parliament’s control function. The Harberg Committee consisted of representatives from all parties and professional expertise such as Professors Eirik Holmøyvik and Benedikte Moltumyr Høgberg (both of the lawyers mentioned).

The Harberg Commission presented its work on February 1, 2021. Over the past six months, Parliament has on several occasions taken up important issues arising from it:

Does the Norwegian Parliament have the right to examine government documents? Solberg’s government did not mean that. The Prime Minister’s office described this as “unclear”, despite the fact that Article 75f of the constitution states that Parliament must be able to submit “all public reports and papers”.

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Fortunately, one has Parliament has now clarified this basic democratic principle of popular control of government. All that remains now is for Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store to hack the Prime Minister’s office and ensure that the government follows the views of Parliament.

In the spring of 2020, Rødt received a unanimous resolution from the German parliament stating that the Harberg Commission should pursue two points in particular:

• The public’s insight into the investigations of the Office of the Auditor General.
• The Norwegian Parliament’s control of foreign and security policy.

In the transition to the F-35 – the largest public procurement in Norway’s history – the OAG examined the air force’s combat capability. But the report on this from 2019 is confidential, as is the subsequent consideration of Parliament. This is because the government set foot in publishing, and thus gained information about controlling itself.

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Parliament has nowHe made it clear, through the consideration of the Harburg Committee’s Oversight and Constitutional Committee, that the government had an obligation to facilitate transparency. In cases where not all information can be made public, Parliament expects that the Office of the Auditor General will make a copy as complete and public as possible.

The background to the role of the European Parliament in foreign and security policy lies, among other things, in the lessons of the bloody Libyan war, in which Norwegian bombers were on the flanks without a single official meeting. Parliament is tired of cell phone calling.

A joint parliamentary commission made a number of important clarifications: Parliament must be consulted before important decisions in foreign policy are made, so that it has a real impact on government decisions. Closed meetings of the Extended Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee should not be abused to prevent public debate on important issues.

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The government should not Sending troops to war without presenting a robust, comprehensive and verifiable plan with a mandate under international law and a clear framework. Parliament also supports the Harburg Committee’s assessment that, in order to ensure democratic legitimacy, it may be advisable for the government, in addition to consultation, to ensure that decisions to engage in military operations abroad are clearly based on Parliament.

Democracy does not stand in the way of action, but is a prerequisite for well-thought-out actions. The Civil Ombudsman was appointed by Parliament to ensure that those in power did not oppress those in power, and he was referred to as the “People’s Advocate”. as such Mentioned in Dagbladet For a long time, the Conservative government wanted to restrict the civil ombudsman’s access to necessary documents.

A comprehensive selection of Harberg A unanimous oversight committee originally called for the civil ombudsman’s access to government memos and accompanying documents. The starting point is that it is the inspector who determines what they need to carry out their task, not the inspector. Control requires transparency.

But when Parliament considered the Civil Ombudsman Act before the elections, government leaders struggled to stop the access proposal. The parliamentary majority allowed it to be pushed into place.

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This was included as a piece of what we might call «Solberg’s anti-parliamentary». Unfortunately, there is a line from the Conservative Party’s historical opposition to parliamentary democracy, to what we’ve seen of the Conservative government’s struggle to limit Parliament’s control of government.

with a new majority After the election, Rødt proposed changes to the law. Parliament recently adopted the proposal, that the civil ombudsman would have the necessary access, to ensure that Parliament and the people control the powers.

Before that, power was in the hands of the king and officials. Parliamentarianism made significant progress in Norway in 1884. The authority is less authoritarian. But the struggle for democracy continues. We must be wary of an upward shift of power at the national and global levels. The control of the elected representatives – Parliament – over the government must be ensured.

We are far from finished. But in a number of cases, Rødt has gained a clean foothold.