By Gilbert M Karengye
OPINION
I want to first of all appreciate Hon. Naome Kabasharira the Rushenyi county Member of Parliament for remaining one of the few trusted and modeled legislators in the Ugandan parliament and to congratulate her upon passing through a tough and bloody 2021 Rushenyi county election.
Parrots UG yesterday reported that Hon. Kabasharira intends to move a private members bill seeking to reduce on the number of legislators in parliament one way of reducing on public expenditures by parliament.
According to the online publisher and other media reports, the Honourable notes that a few members of the parliament even attends plenary sittings which affects legislation.
The intended bill whether brought in good faith or bad faith seem attracting debates with many Ugandans welcoming it while others say its dead on arrival.
NEWSFEED: The Rushenyi county MP Naome Kabasharira has said she wants to move a private members bill seeking to reduce on the number of legislators in @Parliament_Ug . She says the number of MPs is overwhelming which wastes taxpayer's money #ParrotsugNews@DanKimosho pic.twitter.com/2Pu5k6yoCs
— Parrots UG (@parrotsug) April 25, 2022
I have thoroughly scrutinised Kabasharira’s comments as reported in the media, made observations and recommendations to her as she is spending sleepless nights doing research about the bill.
Hon Kabasharira must first of all recognize the fact that she is supposed to understand the reasons as to why her political party which is the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) creates many administrative structures both at Local Government and Central Government levels, parliamentary seats not spared. If at all she does not know, I can tell her. For the NRM party to remain in power, it is within its systems to make sure that all the time it has a huge number of parliamentary representatives in order for it to have majority of support in case there are some laws, policies and even strategies meant for it to have a long stay in power. She ought understand this by taking a glance at how the former speaker of parliament Late Jacob Oulanya was elected to speakership, how term and age limits were removed from the 1995 constitution of the republic of Uganda to mention but a few.
In summary, the NRM political party needs a biggest number of Members to support it in case of any arising matters to avoid being overrun by the opposition members in the August House. Once NRM has any business that requires support of parliament, it is to its advantage that it has a bigger number in parliament including the independent members who lean on NRM side.
Furthermore, once NRM realizes that it is losing support in a certain
district or region, it rushes to the areas where it has more support to create other constituencies to compensate for the ones within which it has lost supporters. Therefore, I want to inform Hon Kabasharira that even by 2026, more constituencies will have been created just because of the aforementioned reasons.
Good as it may be, Hon Kabasharira needs to be assured that to her dismay, her own members of NRM will be the majority to wrestle down her bill because the NRM chairman will not support it. This is something that may once again force NRM caucus to go for a retreat to come up with a common ground of letting it down. She will encounter with difficulties and hardships to convince the ruling NRM members support the bill. There’s no betting on this! We all are aware that whenever any serious matter like this rises up, NRM invites members to the National Leadership Institute for a common stand which is usually brought by the party chairman at the national level (President Museveni) himself and results of such caucuses have since time immemorial remained the same. Creation of new administrative units in Uganda is political because politicians themselves use it as an advantage to politically blackmail electorates that they want to bring services closer to them
In Ntungamo district alone where Hon Naome Kabasharira hails from, currently there is a cocoon of political leaders including herself who are proposing that the district be dissected into districts of Ruhama, Rushenyi and Kajara with the reasoning that this will extend services to the people. It was a disgrace that the president on refusing to concur with the proposal, he promised to work on some roads though the promise is still fruitless. How possible shall it be that if Ntungamo district has failed to have a district hospital, the people of Ruhama, Kajara and Rushenyi will have district hospitals after separating from Ntungamo?
Politicians need to stop this habit of being deceptive to electorates all the time. Our local people need services delivered to them instead of creating administrative units which are also very expensive to finance on the expense of the poor tax payers. When people want roads, health services, quality education services, security services etc., why do you deceive them that their problems will be solved by creating constituencies, sub counties, districts, parishes etc?
In 1996, Uganda had only 45 districts but same health centers and hospitals with the same health services that existed during that time, are the ones being used to deliver health services to more than 130 districts currently.
Hon Kabasharira needs to know that once a country contains a lot of deficiencies in administration and leadership, even if the number of MPs is sliced, there is still nothing good that will be witnessed in that country. I tend to think that with the big number of MPs, we should have managed to fight corruption, established a minimum wage for Ugandan labor etc. Maybe if the number of MPs is reduced we shall have good emoluments for our teachers, state prosecutors, health workers, security officers including police etc but as I have already told you, there can never be any change even if Uganda had only ten MPs in parliament because Ugandan leaders are always focused on politics instead of service delivery.
I usually hear some dormant MPs lamely excusing themselves that they are so many in parliament that they can’t get chances to speak on the floor of parliament. I want to assure Hon Kabasharira that like I have already said, even if they were only ten in parliament, a dormant MP would remain like that because in Ugandan parliament we have also MPs who find it so difficult to address journalists on some issues affecting Uganda. Three weeks ago, opposition’s Ssemujju Nganda, member of parliament for Kiira municipality made comments in an interview that with the current quality of parliament in the country, 85 percent of the legislators cannot chair a village meeting, I quote verbatim.
“In Uganda, we are facing a dangerous problem that many people see politics as a lucrative business, which is not true. Parliament needs people that are well polished. But electorates normally send people to Parliament who cannot even chair a village meeting. I have one member who has always asked me to help him speak but whenever I ask him to stand, he pleads with me to leave him because he is not ready. So over 300 members fall in such a category who cannot debate but they are waiting to say yes or no depending on what the majority wants,” Ssemujju said while appearing on CBS Radio Talk Show.
He certainly was meaning this!
I cannot mention these MPs, but those who cannot give a speech are known. I pray that you do not ask me to explain how they carried out competitive campaigns in constituencies/ counties to defeat the rest and end up in parliament – but, we all know who passed via the window to parliament.
Many of the Members of Parliament attend parliamentary sessions when there is an income generating matter on the floor of parliament where they are/have been cash-bribed to react on the matter in favor of the briber. These are at the same time the ones who tell voters that the number in parliament is too much for them to get chances to speak on the floor of parliament. There is no way how a committed legislator can spend five years in parliament without speaking in parliament.
On the other hand, when business in parliament is not income generating for the MPs, the dormant and unpatriotic legislators usually attend to their personal businesses both inside and outside Uganda while a few legislators attend parliamentary sessions to deliberate on important issues. Of course even dormant legislators are useful to NRM when there is a simple parliamentary business on the floor that does not require cracking of heads such as voting either by ballot or voting by saying either “YES / i or NO” – during the guys have it session. This is vividly remembered on many scenarios such as on the amendment of article 102 (b) of the constitution which only required one of the two simple words i.e. YES or NO. Of course there are also legislators from the opposition side who fall in the same category of those who keep quiet for five years in parliament much as they may have overwhelmingly got support due to reasons best known by voters. We have independent legislators of the similar calibre.
Therefore, NRM needs and fights to have a bigger number of members of parliament due to these and more reasons. In any case government accepts to reduce the number of MPs, it will be a turning point of losing power because this may give a room for opposition to blossom by reinstating age and term limits in the laws Of Uganda putting NRM at the highest risk of losing power as a party and its chairman too.
With the introduction of this bill, Hon Kabasharira must prepare for the life events might be somewhat unexpected and seem frivolous.
While we would all like the bill to be passed into law, there’s a chance that the architect of these numbers will not allow it germinate. Hon Kabasharira, “Prepare for the worst, hope for the best!”
Written by Hon. Mugisha Gilbert Karengye
Former Ibanda North constituency Independent parliamentary contestant-0785 426 143
