Documents overwhelm MPs as technocrats play tricks

The drums of drama in committees and corridors of Parliament have all gone silent; the music is switched off. Silence, it is budget!
Pages of documents clap back to back as committee members ask the favourite lines, “Chair, which page are you on?”
This they do with quick glances at colleagues’ documents as they attempt to catch up boring statistics and lumped facts, good ingredients for intellectual laziness and surrender.
In Budget Committee chairperson Amos Lugoloobi’s office, three voluminous documents; each placed above the other, shielded half his head as he talked about the need for skilful reading by the MPs during the budget process.
“Now see these documents, you have to read each page, otherwise the technocrats can smuggle in some things and if you don’t interrogate them much, doom!” said Mr Lugoloobi, giving this writer a perturbed glance.

“Understanding these processes, you must read but the problem with you voters is that you drop away seasoned MPs after every five years; now what do we do, that is democracy,” he said.
In these voluminous texts, by the exclamation of ayes, MPs commit taxpayers to bankroll every activity therein, and even borrow and commit posterity.
With multiple strands of businesses competing for the legislators’ attention, every week towards the passing of the Appropriation Bill 2017 – the legal instrument that is to bind and commit the taxpayer to finance the Budget – brings further evidence that most MPs are not abreast with the nitty-gritties of the Budget estimates.

Opposition Chief Whip Ibrahim Ssemujju Nganda (FDC, Kira Municipality) imports a worrying dimension into the conversation.
“They give MPs in Uganda volumes of documents they don’t read; sometimes people make decisions on the floor of Parliament after listening to the direction of debate following what others are saying,” Mr Ssemujju confesses, asking whether MPs even bother to employ well-grounded personal assistants.
“Many politicians have assistants who are not political; they are just attendants. They don’t have any quality and they are not people who can read and research, they just send them to make bank transactions and photocopy documents,” he reveals.
For Koboko County MP and former State minister of Internal Affairs James Baba, hiring a knowledgeable and research-capable assistant is dependent on costs.

“That depends on the Member of Parliament himself, but if you want to do cost saving then you simply have people who just run office errands,” he said.
He, quite obviously unlike many Members of Parliament, told Sunday Monitor he has a researcher “who helps me with Bills that are coming and doing research in particular legislations”.
Otherwise, Mr Baba concedes, you cannot be in the constituency, follow personal affairs and then look up such volumes of documents. Most of the legislators show no interest, preferring to turn up at the time of decision making, an obviously dangerous pattern of legislative behaviour.

Hire researchers
Parliament has a fully-fledged research department where, upon specified information requests by MPs, particular studies can be made to aid their political decisions.
Speaking in confidence so as not to earn colleagues’ wrath, a Woman MP told Sunday Monitor most legislators “never associate with the research department”.
Rakai Woman MP Juliet Kyinyamatama offers the provision of research assistants to legislators as a sure way to encourage informed political decision making.
“MPs have political assistants not research assistants, so we need research assistants,” said the youthful legislator.

This, adds Ms Kyinyamatama, will save them from begging calls they make to researchers and policy analysts for professional guidance.
She said Parliament “should look at finding us research assistants because of course as an MP I don’t have the capacity to appoint an experienced assistant like a researcher because they are expensive”.
Mr Ssemujju has always teased MPs with what he calls the Liberia model-where he said MPs are trimmed in number, given 17 staff including a chief of staff, who research, advice and make a consequence analysis for MPs before they enter plenary for debate and subsequent decision making.
To illuminate the lurking danger of not thoroughly reading through documents, Parliament’s Health Committee got embroiled in a heated exchange with technocrats after a major mistake was discovered in a document submitted, which could authorise multiple salaries to officials.

Mr Lugoloobi said, “Technocrats can make obscure votes and use it as a conduit to get money out of government,” showing this writer a Shs10 billion vote to establish an oxygen plant but there were neither breakdowns nor justifications, a trend he warned if serialised across board could be extremely costly to the already troubled taxpayer.
While visiting the parliamentary library recently, Vice President Edward Kiwanuka Ssekandi urged MPs to frequently use the facility.
“The MPs should use the library and other online platforms…in order to enhance their research and make good informed decisions while on the floor and in the committees,” Mr Ssekandi told Parliament’s website.

Whereas the debate on informed budgeting is old, the passage of time doesn’t make the apparent practice of rote-legislation any less dangerous.
A country is run through series of decisions, in our case most taken by the legislative arm of government, which is the final authority on appropriation and budgeting.
Affording each MP a research assistant may not come easy to the taxpayer, but they should also not waste a good opportunity by appointing relatives and sycophants who will go to the bank, carry their briefcases, wash their cars but add nothing to their legislative agenda.

Besides…
With the approval of police chief Gen Kale Kayihura came a new birth of thirst for reforming the obsolete practice of vetting nominees behind closed doors.
Media speculation over what happens therein rattles MPs, but the back couldn’t stop with any other authority other than Parliament itself – to breathe transparency into the vetting processes. Holders of such important offices should, in keeping with modern democratic practices, be done in broad daylight.
It is common to see MPs disapproving nominees and passing others who have the same credentials, leaving the rest of Uganda to wonder what drives, motivates and guides these cave decisions.