The virtual Training Seminar on Parliamentary Responsibilities held its last day and closing ceremony on 6 November 2020. The ceremony was attended by H.E. Mr Srun Dara, Deputy Secretary General of the National Assembly of Cambodia and Her Excellency Mrs Nguyen Tuong Van, AIPA Secretary General.
Also participating were resource persons and moderators, along with representatives from ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Assembly (AIPA) Member Parliaments, including Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, AIPA and King Prajadhipok’s Institute. Among the 54 participants attending the five-week training seminar, 48 participants have been awarded a certificate of completion and participation.
Organized by the Parliamentary Institute of Cambodia (PIC), the online training seminar served as a platform for the exchange of knowledge and sharing of best practices on the three core functions of the Parliament: legislation, representation and oversight. Contributing towards the theme of “An Overview of Parliamentary Responsibilities: Strengthening the Institutions”, resource persons came from AIPA, the French Senate and National Assembly, the State Parliament of Zurich, the Legislative Assembly of Ontario and PIC.
Key takeaways include: appreciating the diverse structure of parliamentary systems and its practices; ways to bridge the gap between the parliament and its citizens through the representation function; and tools used by Parliaments to provide checks and balances on the government. Another point of discussion was parliamentary diplomacy, a valuable tool to strengthen international relations within the ASEAN region and beyond.
In his keynote address, H.E. Mr Srun Dara expressed his gratitude to PIC for organizing the event, adding “that the process of knowledge exchange and the development of human connections (networking) are instrumental to contribute to strengthening parliamentary institutions which have emerged after times of difficulty, and so can benefit from learning about different parliamentary practices”.
Her Excellency Mrs Nguyen Tuong Van, AIPA Secretary General, thanked PIC for organizing the training seminar. She also acknowledged the panelists who served as resources persons, noting their contribution to the success of the seminar. She expressed her hope that “in the future, PIC will jointly organize seminars with AIPA since these seminars are very useful for AIPA Member Parliaments”.