Uganda’s Clueless Parliament; President Museveni is the Problem

by Valerian Kkonde

PEARL NEWS SERVICE

Rt. Hon. Rebecca Alitwala Kadaga the Speaker of Parliament. It is up to her to protect the integrity of Parliament or let it to be a laughing stock.

If the greed, arrogance and insensitiveness being displayed by Uganda’s tenth Parliament sends shivers down your spine, then it could mean two things. Either you are new to Uganda, or for the last thirty years you have been disinterested in the affairs of this country. Otherwise, what Parliament is going through is exactly what power-hungry Museveni has subjected all the other institutions to.

 During his regime, President Museveni has put more effort in undermining institutions and replacing them with himself than ensuring they fulfill their constitutional mandate of serving the common good. This is the main reason why Uganda has stagnated, in all sectors, and taken to backtracking when it comes to sustainable peace and development.

Uganda’s Parliament, the third arm of government, is a mockery of good governance. First the numbers are outrageous! Second its composition reduces it to a club of gamblers, opportunists and lumpens. Any semblance of legislation has deliberately been dashed as the so called honourables have been reduced to fortune seekers who cannot even tell whether the people they claim to represent have the basic necessities, go to bed on empty stomachs or have a say in the governance of the country.

For Museveni, the more Parliament is disgraced, the better for him; a Parliament that gives hope to Ugandans, calls him to order, challenges his decisions and lives up to its expectations is what he can not tolerate around.

At the time of grumbling for the shillings 150 million to buy themselves vehicles, a number of private initiatives were being undertaken to bring to an end the perishing of Ugandans in hopeless and avoidable road accidents.

Nkozi hospital, founded by missionaries 75 years ago, is one such undertaking. Situated along the notorious Kampala-Masaka accident snare, the hospital has been overwhelmed by the numbers of accident victims they attend to on a daily basis.

Managed by Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary Reparatrix- Ggogonya, this is one of the very few hospitals in Uganda visited by patients with hope that they will be attended to and even get better. The vast majority, including Mulago National Referral Hospital, have been turned into places where patients converge to lament, groan and kick the bucket. That is the legacy of the power -hungry Museveni.

“We are searching left and right to raise funds for the Accident and Emergency Ward to save lives of at least 15 victims of road accidents a week,” the hospital management pleads.

Unfortunately, Parliament which was supposed to Legislate, play the oversight role and advise the Executive is preoccupied with grabbing the tax-payer’s money as if it is the vehicles that voted for them. The best interpretation of this avarice is that they no longer need nor care about the well being of the voters.

This initiative is being spearheaded by His Eminence Emmanuel Cardinal Wamala and the Buganda prince David Kintu Wassajja. The hospital requires at least 650 million for the emergency ward. Disgustingly the 431 MPs have as well been allocated 68 million shillings each as cover for their funeral! Uganda has indeed gone to the dogs. Such sickening Parliaments can only be found in countries with demagogues for leaders. They are the mirror of the rulers, one does not need to look elsewhere to tell the caliber of those wielding power.

From the peanuts that the doctors and teachers are paid, they are able to save and buy themselves cars, meet the medical expenses for their families and take care of their funeral arrangements. What is so special about Uganda’s MPs who have to squeeze the tax payers to live extravagantly? They are doing all this in the name of and to the well being of Museveni.

President Museveni, who has been in power for the last 30 years after a five-year bloody guerrilla war, spared nothing to grab state power. He is doing exactly the same to cling to it.

Museveni always positions his lumpens to take care of his selfish, primitive and destructive interests. Usually it is the newly rich, with nothing to lose. Because he sees no future outside State House, this time round he is targeting Parliament so that he can console his ego that he got a legal mandate to cling to power by getting it to remove the 75 year ceiling for one to be president.

President Museveni’s evil desire to turn this 10^th Parliament into his rubber stamp was at display when the so called legislators were electing the House Speaker and the Deputy. He literally supervised the House to ensure that his “faithful servant” Jacob Oulanyah was elected Deputy Speaker.

During the 9^th Parliament, Rebecca Kadaga was the Speaker and Oulanyah the Deputy. In the 10^th Parliament, Kadaga wanted to keep her post and Oulanyah came out openly to challenge her. They both got the National Resistance Movement (NRM) blessing to contest for the Parliamentary Speakership!

The short-lived tag of war helped further bring to the surface the selfish interests within the NRM Party as well as between the two contestants. Seeing that he had no chance, whatsoever, against the elderly Kadaga, Oulanyah decided to go for the less stressing Deputy Speaker spot.

Although the Ministry for Finance, Planning and Economic Development warned against the continued creation of districts that cannot sustain themselves, Museveni has made it a hobby to create as many districts as possible. Never mind that his reasoning has long been trashed by experts that numerous districts do not help bring services closer to the people.

Majority of districts do not even receive enough funds from the central government to enable them meet the expectations of their residents. They only exist to satisfy the ego of those seeking cheap popularity and wanting to be praised as the author of this and that, no matter the catastrophic consequences.

Africa’s curse of demagogues who cling to power is characterised by one similar factor; they all are impostors and none performers. Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe failed even to sustain the systems and developments he succeeded from the colonial masters he likes to demonise.

Museveni keeps reminding everyone that he is a freedom fighter but the “freedom” he claims to have fought for continues to force the country’s most productive force to flee the country for slavery in the Arab world. Like Mugabe, he has for the last thirty years failed to fix the ailing and sickening health system. He has even failed to maintain it to the standards those he calls pigs had raised it to.

The trivializing of Parliament is exactly what befell the Judiciary, Police and other public institutions. They have all been reduced to serving Museveni’s interests and preoccupied with maintaining him in power.

In areas where the Opposition won the leadership positions, Museveni is preoccupied with undermining their service delivery efforts. The aim is to discredit them before their electorate and supporters and undermine all attempts at proving that they are alternative leaders.

The demise of the capital Kampala is a result of the city being an Opposition stronghold. Primitive and uncouth measures have been employed to undermine the Opposition leadership but to Museveni’s chagrin everything is backfiring. Frustrated and hurt, Museveni has decided to splash money around, undermine rule of law advocated by the Opposition and try to show that he is a friendly person especially to the majority he has impoverished through oppressive economic policies that favour his cronies.

But these impoverished peasants have proved that they have identified him as the problem and the reason why they have become refugees in their own country. The crime they committed is not to vote the old man with a hat!

Another legacy of Museveni’s brutal regime is the mass displacement and expulsion of people from their ancestral homes, many times with the support of the Police and government officials. This kind of political torture is an initiative of Museveni and has its background in the guerrilla war that helped him grab state power. In colonial times, mass displacements were a measure to contain plagues. Museveni is using them to force compliance and reward accomplices.

Museveni has become this desperate out of his own choice. May be out of greed is a better word. Thirty years is too long a period not to be put to the benefit of the majority. What genuine excuse can Museveni bring forward if not selfishness, greed, non performance and may be accumulated fatigue!   

Museveni’s respect for rule of law is mere lip service. That is why he is more concerned with undermining institutions than empowering them to fulfill their constitutional obligations. Any law enacted under Museveni must be serving his interests and oppressing political opponents; that is the spirit of the laws in the last thirty years.

Religious denominations are also writhing under Museveni’s greed for power. So are the cultural institutions. The emergence of the Old Kampala and Kibuli sects is a result of Museveni’s disrespect and dislike for the rule of law. And he wants to be adored as he pretends to know everything. But because the Mr. Know-it-all has not helped Uganda become better, it follows that he is a pretender.

Muslims have the capacity to resolve their misunderstandings but Museveni, using the state machinery, imposed thugs on them leading to the splinter sects. Thugs who will fail to amass their ill-gotten wealth under Museveni will have themselves to blame. This regime is a one in a life time.

The envy and hatred for Buganda is so vivid that only opportunists can come up and defend these assaults on the foundation, heart and pace setter of Uganda. The emergence of the Baker Kimezes and the Ssabanyalas are clearly calculated to cripple Buganda and pamper Museveni’s wounded ego. Museveni has become notorious for dishing out suspicious financial bailouts but he will never find the money to pay Buganda’s rent arrears.

The Museveni who hates, envies and loves undermining the authority of other leaders continues to show unprecedented hatred for those intending to have a go at the presidency of the country. Museveni’s insistence that the death penalty should stay seems to be driven by that ill-feeling toward those who have shown more leadership potential than him.

On a number of occasions, Museveni has masterminded the fabrication of capital cases against his political nemesis, Dr. Kizza Besigye. It is clear that the intention is to have Besigye convicted of these trumped up charges and thus gets rid of him under the pretext of the law.

The dictators who deliberately undermine institutions and institute themselves as the alpha and omega have always personally reaped the fruits of their brutal reign. For some, tragedy strikes with savage vengeance to include wives, children, grandchildren and even great grand children.

A number of factors have combined to turn Uganda into total hell. These include: the ailing economy, months of unpaid salaries, the hostile climate leading to 90% of crop failure and a precarious health sector. Others are: continued robbery of public funds and resources, a bloated human rights record especially on the part of the Opposition and its supporters and the impunity of security agencies to name but a few.

Parliament has failed to handle any of them, conclusively, to help the country start afresh and move on in a manner that is predictable, peaceful and hinged on the foundation of rule of law and justice. This aloof Parliament continues to snore and scramble for every shilling dangled before it forgetting that instilling hope is a crucial part of nation-building.

Advocates of good governance put in place institutions to streamline the management of society, resolve satisfactorily political, social and economic disputes and take care of the interests of every member of society no matter his or her political affiliation, race or religion. The mad men who hijack this process not only distort nations but they as well become a problem that has to be got rid of with disastrous implications.

It is without doubt that Uganda has a number of problems but the actual problem is Museveni. Museveni is such a problem that climate change, malaria, robbery of public funds and resources, an over crowded and clueless Parliament become so insignificant. Until the Museveni problem is solved, once and for all, sustainable peace and development will remain mere dreams incessantly evaporating before us like steam.