How the 9th Parliament took a wrong turn

Rarely has a public institution inspired so much hope in the citizens like the current Parliament did in its first sessions in 2011.

Legislators managed to shed off the dented image the electorate had about the House as an institution that was underperforming in most of its legislative duties like watching over the government’s expenditures and passing laws.

Whereas the 7th and 8th Parliaments made history for the wrong reasons, the current crop of legislators started out like they were on a mission to redeem the image of the House.

Flash back
In 2005, members of the 7th Parliament gained notoriety when they pocketed Shs5 million to delete presidential term limits from the Constitution while the 8th Parliament opted to take no action when more than Shs500 billion was lost in dubious procurement deals ahead of the 2007 Chogm summit.

The 9th Parliament, however, started on a path of recouping public trust in the Legislature by seeking to rectify the errors committed by their predecessors. There was no better way to do that than to launch a war on corruption, the Achilles Heels of the previous legislators.

In October 2011, five months into its first session, Western Youth MP Gerald Karuhanga tabled a dossier titled: “Brief on Uganda’s Oil deals”. Mr Karuhanga alleged that senior Cabinet ministers- Amama Mbabazi (Prime Minister), Sam Kutesa (Foreign Affairs), and Mr Hilary Onek (then Internal Affairs) pocketed bribes worth millions of dollars from foreign oil companies.

Lwemiyaga County MP petitioned the Speaker for a special House sitting where stormy debates offered Ugandans a sneak peek into an oil sector hitherto shrouded in secrecy.

Questions were raised over the Production Sharing Agreements that the government had agreed with oil companies. However, demands from MPs for the accused ministers to step aside to pave way for a thorough probe were shot down as President Museveni pleaded their innocence.

Nonetheless, the House decided to institute a committee chaired by former minister Michael Werikhe to investigate the accusations against the ministers. Recently, the committee’s report leaked, indicating that no evidence pinning the ministers had been found.
But as the government was spiritedly staving off demands from MPs for the resignation of ministers, another scandal was unfolding in its backyard.

Ms Kabakumba Matsiko, the minister for the Presidency, was adjudged by police to have been illegally using UBC equipment at her Masindi-based Kings FM radio station.
Ms Kabakumba, it emerged, had used her previous docket as Information and National Guidance minister, where she was supervising UBC, to fraudulently access the equipment.
In a rare move, MPs from the ruling party joined their Opposition and Independent-minded counterparts to force Ms Kabakumba to resign amid censure threats. She became the first scalp of the anti-graft fight.

2012
The year 2012 started with a more re-invigorated House; the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) released a damning report pinning ministers Khiddu Makubuya (then, General Duties) and Syda Bbumba (then, Gender) in the loss of Shs160b to businessmen Hassan Basajjabalaba (Shs142 billion) and Col John Mugenyi (Shs14 billion)

What was standing out in the forced resignations was the manner in which Parliament was acting in unison, in stark contrast to the past where NRM members would use their numerical strength to gang up against any cause fronted by the Opposition.

Proceedings at the House elicited faith in the voters and built optimism that members could go about legislative work, without pandering to the whims of the Executive.

This explains why the ruling party had to devise means of isolating the “trouble causers”—the independent minded legislators who even after the mysterious death of their colleague (Cerinah Nebandah) had remained focused on the bigger picture: Uganda.

With one MP (Vincent Kyamadidi of Rwampara) pardoned and allowed back in the party, four other outspoken legislators—Theodore Ssekikubo (Lwemiyaga), Wilfred Niwagaba (Ndorwa East), Muhammad Nsereko (Kampala Central) and Barnabas Tinkasiimire (Buyaga West) have since been dismissed from the party.

The NRM has since run to the Constitutional Court; they want the four MPs out of Parliament.
But as the House was felling minister after minister, there were tell-tale signs that this Parliament would not live up to its billing. MPs were accused of acting like mobs, pandering to the gallery and lacking focus.

There was skepticism about whether an NRM-dominated House had the mettle to fend off pressure from the Executive when decisions that the ruling party had a particular interest in were on the agenda.

And those doubts started being vindicated when Mr Museveni clandestinely met NRM MPs and persuaded them to abandon the fight to force the government to find Shs260 billion in the Budget to fix what Parliament agreed is “a sick health sector”.

When it dawned on the Executive that the ruling party MPs had joined the Opposition in demanding money for the recruitment of much-needed personnel for health centre IIIs and IVs, Mr Museveni reportedly doled out money to NRM MPs, enticing them to often their stance and use their numbers to force through the budget without money for health workers.

The oil Bill
The dream continued to unravel when MPs put on a spirited, though unsuccessful fight, to clip the finance minister’s powers in the Petroleum (Exploration, Development and Production) Bill, 2012. NRM Caucus meetings convened by the President helped to break the back of NRM MPs and pave way for passage of a disputed Bill.

Now in its second session, the confidence the 9th Parliament espoused in its formative sessions has since been drained out by a litany of hollow threats by MPs against the Executive, pocketing dubious allowances from government coffers, forcing through of obnoxious laws and bickering in the Speaker’s chambers.

Legislative work has endured the ultimate brunt of this nose-dive in performance. As the House resumed from recess in February this year, close to 30 petitions from voters were pending disposal while crucial Bills, Auditor General’s reports, questions for oral answers were gathering dust.

The inevitable question prompted by this free-fall in performance is: Where did all it go haywire for an institution that promised very much, but looks set to deliver very little?
Mr Karuhanga, one of the shining lights of the House in its glory days, lays the blame squarely at the Executive, faulting Mr Museveni particularly, for failing to appreciate the rule of separation of powers.

“PAC, for example, has produced many reports that implicate top government officials but they [the officials] are never brought to book by the Executive. The executive has consistently failed Parliament. Even the small internal wrangles [at the House] are facilitated by the Executive,” Mr Karuhanga said.

However, Mr Karuhanga could not elaborately explain whether the Executive also frustrated a motion he attempted to table, pushing for amendments in the Constitution to reinstate presidential term limits, curtly saying the “Speaker will schedule it sooner than later.”

In April last year, 103 MPs signed the motion, falling way below the 250 signatures mark prescribed by the House rules. Mr Karuhanga and the group have since gone mute, raising questions about whether it was a genuine cause or a gimmick mooted to hoodwink voters.
Mr Hippo Twebaze, a researcher based at Parliament points to a correlation between legislators failing to manage their pecuniary lives and a dip in their performance.
“Issues of indebtedness are more acute in this Parliament and this makes legislators lose focus on Parliamentary work as they have to deal with issues of survival as election time [2016] closes in,” Mr Twebaze said.
Broke MPs
Several MPs in the 9th Parliament have been mired in trouble related to finances, ranging from issuance of bounced cheques to defaulting on loans.

Just last month, Kyadondo South MP Issa Kikungwe was the latest victim of a wanting financial behaviour after court summoned him for allegedly failing to pay a loan worth Shs170.8 million in connection with a salary loan he secured from a commercial bank.

Ms Cissy Kagaba, the executive director of the Anti-Corruption Coalition Uganda, re-echoes concerns about the relationship between lack of fiscal discipline by members and the Executive pouncing on such weaknesses to manipulate them.

“It [money] is a carrot that the Executive keeps dangling at them and they cannot bite it and at the same time come out to hold the executive accountable. For some time, MPs have been compromised by money from the Executive,” Ms Kagaba said.

In April, the Executive controversially wired Shs5 million to MPs ostensibly to facilitate consultations in their constituencies on the now shelved controversial Marriage and Divorce Bill.
Bearing in mind that MPs receive a monthly facilitation to go to their constituencies and consult their electorate, the Shs5m bore all the hallmarks of a bribe.

Some opposition MPs and a handful independent minded MPs rejected this abuse of public funds. However, some opposition MPs pocketed the money and moved on as if nothing had happened to the extent that when their Leader of Opposition Nandala Mafabi asked them to refund the money, they castigated him as a “bad guy”.

Lubaga South MP Ken Lukyamuzi, a seasoned legislator, reckons that the lack of strength by the front-benchers, citing the failure of ministers to respond to oral questions, is to blame for under-performance.

“The ministerial team in Parliament is very weak. Out of 100 oral questions that are asked, only ten can be asked,” Mr Lukyamuzi says.
Mr Lukyamuzi says over the past year, he has raised oral questions over reports into the mysterious fires that razed the Kasubi tombs and Budo Junior School, but responses have not been forthcoming.

House Rules require ministers a maximum of two weeks to respond to questions from members.
Ms Kasule Lumumba, the government chief whip, admits that responses to oral questions have been “sluggish” but explains that measures have been devised to mitigate this. “Responses have been provided to all oral questions except those that were asked in the last one month,” Ms Lumumba said.
‘Unjust’ laws
The 9th Parliament has also come under fire for passing laws that rights organisations have labeled anti-people like the Public Order and Management Bill.
In July, the parliamentary Committee on Appointments approved General Aronda Nyakairima, the former army commander, as minister of Internal Affairs, despite the Constitution requiring him to first resign from the army.

Dr Frederick Golooba-Mutebi, a political researcher, says if the decision had been “illegal” rather than simply “objectionable, it would have challenged it in court. Has anyone done that?”
“In a multi-party system, especially an adversarial one such as Uganda’s, MPs is bound by party discipline and must toe the party line. Many Ugandan MPs are too timid to oppose their party positions. NRM MPs so far excel at this,” Dr Golooba said.

Dr Mohammed Kulumba, a political scientist at Makerere University, suggests that the bickering in the Speaker’s chambers have also hampered performance of the House, though he explains that the bickering between the two is an indicator of an Executive hell-bent on stifling institutions.

“Initially, Ugandans were led to believe that the NRM was an institution builder. But over the years, it has become clear that institutions built by the NRM only exist to give it [the regime] political legitimacy and that explains why most institutions do not operate,” Dr Kulumba said.

In August, insights were offered into a quiet row that was brewing in the Speaker’s chambers. As the crucial budgeting process to pass the 2013/14 budget was underway, Deputy Speaker Jacob Oulanyah opted to relocate to his Omoro constituency well aware that the Speaker Rebecca Kadaga was away in South Africa.

Parliament defaulted on its constitutional mandate of passing the budget on time, hampering service delivery as funds depend on the budget process.