Understand what govt is before you attack MPs

One Henry Edison Okurut wrote in the Daily Monitor asking why I defended Shs68 million Parliament projected as costs of meeting burial expenses in case a Member of Parliament died.

I was reluctant to respond because Mr Okurut came off as an excited elite eager to find something to write about with less reflection.

If me, a person employed to speak on behalf of Parliament should not speak for it, then who should? Mr Okurut?
He also starts his commentary by talking about his being a native of South Teso, where I also come from—moreover there is nothing like South Teso anymore. We have Teso with several districts. This is a self-confessed nationalist parading sectarian innuendo on matters of national significance!

He goes on to narrate how I had strong convictions about the need for political fairness, rational resource allocation, constitutionalism and quality service delivery for all. But he also concludes that I have metamorphosed into something else. How he knew about my convictions and how they have changed, is only a struggle of a person focused on discussing people not issues.

Why it was only me and not him, who had those convictions, exposes the fact that he prefers being a bystander or a fence sitter. In summary the article was a well calibrated blackmail effort.

No wonder, the elite who write in the comfort of their air-conditioned offices about how this and that is wrong with government, have never been seen on the streets.

Erias Lukwago and Dr Kizza Besigye who have defied elitism, have often been left with a handful of the intelligentsia and hundreds of the “unwashed”. One wonders where the disenchantment of the Okurut type is.

I am still a strong advocate of good governance but I am no longer an active journalist. If Mr Okurut and his ilk still want me to be a practicing journalist, then they contradict themselves by preaching constitutionalism, human rights etc. yet they are struggling to stifle my own right to choice of a career.

I do not know whether Mr Okurut decided that I become a journalist and whether he should still decide what I should be. My career is largely reliant on the choices I make and not what Mr Okurut wants me to be.

And you do not achieve what you want by focusing on what others should be. Every citizen has a right to pursue their own happiness their own way. Every person has a right to cry and a right to laugh. My working for the Parliament of Uganda does not stop Okurut from ‘fighting’ government if that is his choice.

Away from that, let me substantively address the issues he misrepresented. Parliament has never budgeted for a mabugo grant of Shs68 million as he wrote. No MP is given a grant for burial and my earlier article on it was clear. Meeting burial expenses is a policy of government for the entire public service machinery. It’s not restricted to MPs.

The State has three categories of burials: State funeral, official funeral and ordinary funeral. Any commentator ought to know those facts before coming out as ill-informed thus transmitting feelings instead of facts.
If the status of an MP is what is troubling Mr Okurut, then it is simple: An MP is a VIP. He is elected by people. And it’s open to anyone.

Two, the cost of public administration is met by taxpayers. Public administration does not operate on voluntarism. Some people must be paid to do it. The well placed debate then should be: Do they deliver services as expected by the citizenry? If not, why?

To some, it’s because MPs are given cars and Parliament also budgets to meet burial expenses of at least five MPs in a year, never mind that out of a national Budget of Shs26 trillion, Parliament budget is Shs400 billion.

So they rant that how can Parliament have a budget of Shs400 billion when children are studying under trees, hospitals have no medicines, roads are poor etc. Other than serving propaganda value, this argument is sterile.
It only shows that most public commentators are not interested in understanding the critical challenges but choose the easy route—lambast MPs at any given opportunity.

The failure of service delivery in Uganda is no longer a function of limited budget alone. Serious citizens and organisations have since published findings that over the years, funding to service delivery sectors has been increasing yet services keep dwindling. World Bank has records of how the budgetary allocation in Uganda has been improving over the years.

The President has also publicly complained about poor absorption of funds by sectors. So, when some elite come out to say services are poor because MPs were given money for cars; one has to cry for this country.

Evidence abounds that money allocation alone is no longer the only issue in our service delivery mechanisms. Even if you scrapped all the Shs400 billion allocated to Parliament, it will not lead to automatic improvement in service delivery, especially when spending units are unable to absorb their budgetary allocation.

Public policy
On that note, allow me share my understanding of policy. Public policy problems are by nature so fuzzy and ill-defined, therefore; they have different dimensions. But there are constants like the issues/problems on the public agenda. Problems are as old as the human race; it’s the solutions to the problems that are new.

There are also the actors who present, interpret and respond to those issues. These include policy actors who are the implementers like the bureaucrats and the policy network i.e. wider groups like civil society actors.

The other constant is the resources affected by the issues and the institutions that deal with those issues. The economists say there have never been enough resources, that is why economics is largely the study and management of scarcity.

The last constant, in my view, is the levels of government that address those issues. In this case, there are two levels: National level i.e. ministries, departments and agencies; and local level i.e. city councils, town or village councils, school boards, hospital boards etc. All these levels of government must work effectively for services to be delivered.

In our country, most people who talk about government have never known their village councillor or have never known the chair of their school board. All they know government is an MP! May they know that the institutions that manage the policy process are: the Executive i.e.

Cabinet, presidency and Office of the Prime Minister, the Judiciary, the Legislature, bureaucrats and even the ruling party.

The public discourse should shift from sterile debates to providing policy options with clear and measurable indicators. Let’s provide feasible programme alternatives not fiction because Uganda is not a fiction novel. Free the captive mind and let policy champions emerge in this country.

The writer is director communication and public affairs Parliament of Uganda