Is Parliament being bad-mouthed to serve Museveni’s power game?

Sometime in August last year, a group of MPs met President Museveni at State House Entebbe to discuss, among other things, the controversial matter of the car grant for each member of the 10th Parliament.
One of the MPs who attended the meeting, told this reporter that to their surprise, key details of what they had discussed with the President were already on social media and radio stations even before they made the journey from Entebbe to Kampala.
The most unsettling detail for the MPs was that each of them would now bag Shs200m as a car grant instead of the Shs150m that had been earlier mooted. The debate about the prospect of each MP getting Shs150m had already been explosive, with critics saying it is too high given the high number of MPs and the numerous unfunded priorities that the country faces.
Whereas the issue of raising the money to Shs200m for each MP had come up in the meeting with the President, the MPs were angry that they were being set up by the presidency to appear to the members of the public as greedy and insensitive to the suffering of Ugandans.
To keep with the subject of MPs’ cars, the matter had already caused unease between Parliament and the ministry of Finance when during the Budget preparation process for the financial year 2016/17 the team from Parliament had been forced to strike the provision for the MPs’ cars off their proposals. The ministry said there was no money for the cars.
The Budget for this financial year was passed in May by the last Parliament before the current Parliament took office in June, just a month to the start of a new financial on July 1. Ideally, therefore, the last Parliament should have made available in the Budget money to acquire cars for members of the 10th Parliament since it is now an established tradition that MPs get car grants at the beginning of their five-year term.
The matter was, however, left to the President to handle and the moment the new Parliament was sworn in, groups of MPs started beseeching the President to finance the MPs’ cars, which resulted in meetings like the one referred to above.

More complications
During the meetings between MPs and the President, different MPs say it was decided that despite the fact that no money had been provided in the Budget to finance the car grants, the President promised that money would be found for the MPs’ cars anyway.
It was agreed, however, that the car grant would be paid to MPs in instalments, starting with Shs100m per MP this financial year, with the balance to come later.
In October last year, Mr Chris Obore, the director of communications at Parliament, announced that Shs25b had been paid out to the first batch of MPs, each bagging Shs100m as the first instalment of the car grant.
Shortly after the announcement, the ministry of Finance said the Shs25b that had been released to Parliament was part of routine releases to the Legislature and was not meant for the MPs’ cars.
Why would the ministry of Finance and Parliament have to bicker about what purpose money passed on the Legislature would be put to? Is it possible that when the money was released there was no clear itemisation for its use?

One perspective
Different MPs feel that there is a deliberate plan to depict them as greedy, a plot some believe starts right at the level of the presidency.
Those who hold this view argue that it is in the interest of the President for Parliament to be weak, divided and disorganised. This is because, those who hold this view argue, a strong and united Parliament would be a powerful counterweight to the presidency.
In fact, the Constitution grants Parliament powers to impeach the President, and Parliament also has power to pass laws against the will of the President.
This power was almost exhibited recently when, after the President bounced back to Parliament a Bill on proposed amendments to the Income Tax Act that would, among other things, exclude MPs’ allowances from taxation, Parliament looked set to pass the Bill on third reading and make it law without a presidential assent.
It only emerged within moments of passing the Bill that the President, despite having been reported to have sent back the Bill to the Speaker of Parliament for a second time, had finally assented to the Bill, in the process averting the likelihood of being overruled by Parliament.
Whereas there have been a few other times when Bills or motions got bi-partisan support, like when members of the 9th Parliament in 2011 rallied on the debate about alleged oil bribes, the manner of the President’s signing of the Income Tax Amendment Bill late last year was a rare demonstration of how powerful a united Parliament can be.
Those who argue that the President has an interest in depicting Parliament as confused, greedy and ineffectual say it is done to avoid situations like these.

Why Parliament matters to Museveni
During the election of the Speaker and Deputy Speaker for the current Parliament, for instance, President Museveni presided over the election and swearing in of the speakers despite protestations by critics that the head of the Executive presiding over this parliamentary function was an affront on the principle of separation of powers.
To many an observer, Mr Museveni’s presence in Parliament on that day was viewed as an early attempt at sizing up the House ahead of potentially career defining battles on his part during the course of the current Parliament.
It is highly anticipated that the ruling group will during this parliamentary term try to delete from the Constitution the 75-year age limitation for eligibility for the presidency because Mr Museveni is legally debarred from seeking re-election because he will be officially beyond 75 years at the time of the next election in 2021.
The last time Mr Museveni got Parliament to delete from the Constitution a similar roadblock to his continued stay in power – the two-term limit – in 2005, various tactics and sometimes overtly highhanded measures were taken against Parliament.
For instance, the rules for voting were changed to provide for open voting instead of secret ballot for MPs on the contentious issue of whether to remove term limits. Then Brig Henry Tumukunde, who was an army representative and still a serving soldier, was forced to resign primarily because he vehemently argued against open voting, saying it would lead to victimisation of individuals who would vote for retaining term limits.
Mr Tumukunde would later take these arguments to a talk show on Buganda Kingdom’s CBS radio station, for which reason he was arrested and charged by the army court of “spreading harmful propaganda”, among other charges, charges he battled for almost seven years.
It was much later that Mr Tumukunde would be brought back into the fold, promoted to Major General and retired from the army before playing a key role in Mr Museveni’s re-election campaign of 2015/16. Mr Tumukunde is now minister for Security.
One army representative who was perhaps not as lucky as Mr Tumukunde was Col Fred Bogere, who elected to abstain in the controversial vote to decide whether to delete or retain term limits, arguing that being a serving soldier, he was constrained to vote on a matter that was politically divisive.
By the time Col Bogere was invited to cast his vote in the full view and hearing of everyone, his boss, then Chief of Defence Forces, Gen Aronda Nyakairima, had already openly voted to delete term limits.
The army would later explain that Col Bogere, for failing to take cue from his commander, had acted improperly. He was removed from Parliament and he never took up any significant deployment in the army until his retirement from the Forces recently.

Parliament cries foul
A number of MPs will be keenly aware what Mr Museveni’s interests are. They know that whereas he may speak ill of them sometimes, he will pay attention to their demands at other times because they in theory have immense capacity to affect his presidency.
During a meeting with ruling party MPs at Kyankwanzi at the start of the term of the current Parliament, for instance, Mr Museveni said there would be no increments made to the MPs’ emoluments. But the President would eventually yield to not taxing the MPs’ allowances.
And while presiding over the election and swearing in of the Speaker, the President defended the size of Parliament, which is a regular jab thrown at the Legislature, saying he was solely responsible for its big size.
In sum, therefore, President Museveni bashes and defends Parliament as and when it serves him well, all the time looking to maintain a balance healthy enough for his continued hold on to power.
But perhaps because the President does not seem to have a lot of regard for Parliament and parliamentarians, his spokespeople and other government officials sometimes don’t take Parliament very seriously.
One case we already dwelt on is that relationship between Parliament and the ministry of Finance.
When the story of the payout of Shs6b to 42 public officials who participated in the oil cases which Uganda won against two oil companies and bagged $700m broke last week, glimmers of what is brewing in Parliament and some other State agencies and ministries came to light.
Mr Obore took to Facebook to wonder why civil society activists were not yet up in arms against the bonus payout to some of the most highly paid public servants in the country. He claimed that most critics, particularly civil society activists, are usually most charged when allegations of financial profligacy are levelled against MPs and Parliament, but are less inclined to dig into officials from other agencies and ministries.
Mr Obore would later release another statement alleging that in order to divert the public’s attention from the bonus payout, a story about “a non-existent” plan to buy a helicopter for Speaker Kadaga was being peddled by people he did not name.
On the same subject, Ms Kadaga told Sunday Monitor: “We don’t have any chopper plans in our budgets, but even if it were to be bought, it would not be my property in Mblamuti (her village in Kamuli District). It would be a property of government. But we have no plans to buy a helicopter. It is speculation to divert public attention and the public should not be duped.”
Ms Kadaga said Parliament intended to inquire into the mechanics and criteria of the payout.
What can be clearly read from the Speaker’s statement is that Parliament feels besieged and victimised in the eyes of the public.
A number of MPs we talked to on separate occasions express similar views. It is the way the game has been played for decades.

Brewing in House
When the story of the payout of Shs6b to 42 public officials who participated in the oil cases which Uganda won against two oil companies and bagged $700m broke last week, glimmers of what is brewing in Parliament and some other State agencies and ministries came to light. The director of communications at Parliament released a statement alleging that in order to divert the public’s attention from the bonus payout, a story about “a non-existent” plan to buy a helicopter for Speaker Kadaga was being peddled by people he did not name.

Shs25b

Last year Mr Obore announced that Shs25b had been paid out as the first batch of MPs car grant. But ministry of Finance said the money was not meant for the MPs’ cars.

[email protected]