Honorable speaker of the House of Peoples’ Representatives Ambassador Teshome Toga underscored that the performance of the House during the first-half working sessions of the budget year of 2000 was excellent which focused on immense activities aiming at building execution capacity.

In a news conference he gave to government and private media agents on 15 February 2008, he underscored that encouraging activities carried out during the reported period of make the working procedures and practices of the House quite participatory, democratic and transparent, which are also instrumental to promote the multi-party parliamentary democracy.

Meanwhile, he also stated that efforts were exerted to enhance the capacity building endeavors in offering more than 35 training workshops, organized together with collaborators, to members of standing committees and other parliamentarians in a view to support the House in making its activities effective and efficient.

On the other hand, satisfactory performance has been achieved in parliamentary diplomacy through legislation and over sighting work to ensure the participation of the people, speaker elaborated.

Speaker said that more than 22 laws, which support the development initiatives of the government, were tabled that most of them were endorsed and others referred to pertinent committee for scrutiny; and he added that the working pace of the House is proper and more encouraging than that of the previous year, which is also promising to achieve the yearly legislative plan.

Honorable Speaker underlined that the efforts exerted to build the image of the country in the 51th meeting of the executive committee as well as 30th conference of the APU, the commitment exercised to host the first conference convened to establish IGAD-IPU, the success achieved to be a member of the executive committee of IPU in Geneva, the opportunity Ethiopia assumed elected to be a bureau member in the 14th ACP-EU Joint Parliamentary Assembly convened in Rwanda, among others, are the successful achievements in parliamentary diplomacy.

He further expounded that laws tabled mainly deal with establishment of government institutions, ratification of various protocols signed with partners, among which the law governing the registration of political parties has been endorsed in a view to secure financial subsidy from the government and enable promote political causes peacefully under the constitutional order.