The Legislature
A legislature is the representative branch of a modern government. It gives the people an organized voice in public affairs, considers and enacts laws, approves public revenue and expenditure, scrutinizes the work of government, and provides a public forum in which national questions can be examined before decisions are made. A legislature works through representation, open deliberation, committees, recorded votes, and rules that allow disagreement to be resolved peacefully and lawfully.
The Assembly of Eritrea envisioned by The ABC Journey is a single national chamber of 50 Members of the National Assembly (MONAs). MONAs represent the Eritrean people as a whole, while each member is also connected to a defined electoral district and the communities within it. The proposed districts are an educational starting point rather than final legal boundaries. They seek a workable balance among population, geography, historical communities, cities, rural areas, islands, pastoral territories, and remote border regions. The reasoning behind this model is explained in Why 50 Seats?.
The Assembly is designed to practice the habits required by constitutional democracy: listening, reason-giving, compromise, lawful decision-making, public accountability, and respect for decisions reached through fair procedures. At this stage, it is an educational and institutional model rather than a body exercising legally binding state authority. Its purpose is to help Eritreans develop practical experience in representative government, legislative work, constitutional responsibility, and democratic culture.
The Speaker safeguards the orderly, fair, and efficient conduct of Assembly business. The Speaker presides over sittings, approves agendas prepared by the Clerk, recognizes members, manages speaking time, rules on procedural questions, preserves order, and announces voting results. The office also represents the Assembly and helps maintain consistency in parliamentary practice.
Much of the Assembly’s work will occur through live sessions in the Virtual Chamber, where members can deliberate directly despite being in different locations. Some matters may also be considered through structured written deliberation on The Assembly Floor (TAF). TAF allows MONAs to introduce and support proposals, exchange written positions, submit amendments, vote, and preserve a permanent record of how each matter was considered and decided.
The Assembly distributes detailed work among Committees. Committees examine proposals more closely, receive documents and evidence, consult experts, conduct public hearings, question responsible officials, recommend amendments, and report their conclusions to the full Assembly. This allows the Assembly to give complicated matters more careful attention than would be possible during general debate alone.
Representation should continue between elections and outside formal Assembly sittings. Each of the 50 seats therefore has a public town hall called Meet Your MONA. These town halls allow residents to follow their representative, read announcements, participate in moderated discussions, respond to consultative polls and surveys, and review reports and engagement statistics. They are intended to make representatives visible, reachable, and accountable to the public.
The Assembly’s work is governed by its Rules of Procedure. The rules establish how proposals are introduced, how members are recognized, how debate is conducted, how committees operate, how quorum is verified, how votes are taken, and how official records are maintained. They also establish standards of integrity, fairness, transparency, respectful conduct, and responsible use of parliamentary authority.
Public accountability depends on records and proceedings that citizens can examine and understand. Parliamentary Statistics present attendance, participation, voting, and other institutional information in context, while the Legislative Archive preserves proposals, amendments, committee reports, deliberations, votes, decisions, and precedents for citizens and future members. Public sittings will also be livestreamed through THE ABC Project’s YouTube channel, where recordings will remain available afterward unless public access is lawfully restricted. The channel is shared by the Assembly and the Court as part of the project’s broader public-education mission. This openness helps citizens understand democratic deliberation, judicial proceedings, and constitutional government while strengthening democratic culture. It also reinforces the duty of every MONA to conduct public business with integrity, honesty, professionalism, and respect for the people represented.
Together, these institutions form a complete path through representative government: citizens identify their representatives, MONAs remain connected to the public, proposals are introduced, committees investigate, members deliberate, the Assembly votes, and the resulting decisions and records are preserved. This page is the starting point for exploring that system.