PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES
The revelation by Deputy Speaker that MPs are not doing
research and therefore not illustrating depth in their debate is not farfetched.
In fact I was shocked that this observation even made its way into headline
news in the very first place. Anyone who spares time to read the Hansaard would
agree that the quality of debate in Parliament has deteriorated too much.
Strangely there are some MPs who felt insulted by this glaring truth. In
Uganda, truth has no place in society. To attract enmity and hatred at home and
abroad, one just has to tell the truth or a semblance of it.
The genesis of the current problem of lack of depth characteristic
of this Parliament goes back a couple of years ago. The danger of this problem
is amplified by the surging numbers of NRM Parliamentarians in that House. This
problem began with the President’s three step instruction that NRM MPs should enter
into the house to sleep, wake up and vote. By these orders, President Museveni
single handedly killed the spirit of debate in Parliament.
The President’s instructions simplified the job of MPs
and rendered Parliament a lame duck branch of government. Anyone now aspires to
become an MP, a position with very attractive remuneration, where the earner
just sleeps and wakes up to vote. By far, this is the ideological purview of
Parliamentary democracy in Uganda which has attracted peasants and scoundrels
into it.
The NRM MPs who are the majority in Parliament live in a
herded community like the cows at Kisozi Ranch. The tradition of NRM caucus in
Parliament is to enforce abeyance to NRM lines as prescribed by its leader –
President Museveni. The Chief Whip always is good at issuing directives and
threats for MPs with independent minds to gag independent thinking. The plight
of the so-called rebel MPs has illustrated clearly that being independent
minded in a herded community can lead to a torturous experience.
The herding of members of Parliament deprives that
institution of independence, discourages innovation and exploration of current
research evidence to inform debates. In the end, the MPs represent the President
and his vested interests which are mutually exclusive to those of the struggling
electorates. Being an MP is not rocket science and does not require reasoning,
research, reading or critical thinking because the formula is already set into
three steps – slumber during debate, wake-up when debate is over and vote.
Period!
The cumulative effect is that most of the legislative pieces
made under the current Parliament are not pro-Ugandans, they are intended to
entrench the life Presidency, albeit, at a very high cost. In addition, the use
of bribes to sway voting patterns on contentious issues makes the Parliament
stink from lack of credibility even to perform its basic oversights function.
They bribed Parliament to remove term limits, offer medical treatment favors, loan
baits, scholarships etc to soften hardliners and well informed legislators. The
legislative arm of government is the most vulnerable in the mighty hands of the
Executive.
The current environment in Parliament and the nature of
elected representatives that occupy it makes it very hard for informed debate
because no one is there to hold them accountable. I have agreed with analyses
made by Andrew Mwenda and Timothy Kalyegira on the subject of shallowness and
pettiness among the elite class. In explaining the inability of our elite
community to produce and reproduce genuinely independent minded progressives, Mwenda
diagnosed prevailing “mediocrity” and Kalyegira believes that “generational inferiority
complex” is responsible.
In Uganda generally, reading is a disease which is treated
more harshly than HIV and majority of the MPs do not know the content of most
of their laws that are passed. As the Americans say, if you want to keep your
money safe from a black person, keep it inside the book.
END
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