Baytas: The Government Responds to 70% of Parliamentary Questions in Interaction with Parliament
Mustafa Baytas, the Minister in charge of Relations with Parliament, revealed that the government has received a total of 33,000 written questions from the legislative institution since the beginning of the current term, answering 23,000 of them, which represents a response rate of 70%.
During the weekly session of oral questions in the House of Representatives on Monday, Baytas explained that the government received nearly 24,837 written questions from the House of Representatives alone, responding to over 17,000 of these inquiries. Additionally, the number of questions received from the House of Councillors since October 2021 amounted to approximately 8,082, with the government answering 5,782 of them, achieving a response rate of 71%.
The minister pointed out that the current parliament, in its eleventh legislative term, is the most active in terms of submitting written questions compared to the ninth and tenth terms (2011-2021). He emphasized that “the number of questions posed during this term exceeded 33,000, which is 10,000 more than the total submitted during the previous two terms, which did not exceed 23,000 written questions.” He added that “the current government has responded to a number of questions nearly equivalent to the total posed during the last two legislative terms, reflecting an unprecedented level of interaction.”
According to the data presented by Baytas, the response rate during the tenth legislative term was 54.88%, with answers provided for 13,049 questions out of 23,000. In the ninth term, the rate was 63%, with responses to 15,196 questions out of 23,751. He concluded that “the current parliament is the most proactive in raising questions, and the current government is the most responsive to them.”
For her part, parliamentary member Hooria Didi from the Authenticity and Modernity Party called for continued coordination among government members to ensure effective interaction with parliamentary questions, emphasizing the need to respect the deadlines for responses so that these answers are timely and relevant to citizens’ concerns.
Didi also stressed the importance of improving the quality of answers provided to deputies in terms of accuracy and detail, considering that this “reflects the government’s willingness to engage positively and responsibly and adds credibility to the work of the legislative institution.”
