Stop bribing MPs, Kadaga tells Cabinet

Kyankwanzi. After permanent secretaries came to the 9th Parliament in July last year and accused MPs of asking for “inducements” in order to write favourable reports about them, Speaker Rebecca Kadaga on Thursday moved to check the legislators’ errant behaviour in order to safeguard the integrity of Parliament.
Ms Kadaga, who was presenting a paper: “Building the Strategic Interests of the State: Ensuring cordial interface between the front and the backbench” at the on-going Cabinet retreat in Kyankwanzi, told ministers and permanent secretaries to stop funding MPs because “they are already well-funded by Parliament.”

Sources told Saturday Monitor that the Speaker’s comments on a matter that had almost turned into a culture in previous Parliaments, were cheered by ministers, permanent secretaries and members of NRM’s Central Executive Committee. Some accounting officers, according to sources, threatened to expose the culpable MPs.
To safeguard the independence of Parliament and avoid conflict of interest, MPs’ activities, including travel inland and abroad, are supposed to be facilitated by the Parliamentary Commission.

Ms Kadaga asked the Ministry of Finance not to acquire loans that ministers are not clear about, warning that some loans are driven and pushed by lending agencies.
Information and ICT minister Frank Tumwebaze on Thursday confirmed Ms Kadaga’s directive.
“The Speaker concluded her lecture by appealing to accounting officers and ministers to stop financing MPs for doing their oversight roles because Parliament has money to do that,” Mr Tumwebaze said.

Asked why ministries would fund Parliament, Mr Tumwebaze, himself a former chairperson of the finance committee, explained that “it initially started as a measure to build capacity of MPs to do benchmarking in other jurisdictions because benchmarking is key for informed legislation. This was before the budget for Parliament was enhanced. But as the Speaker observes, it’s no longer necessary for ministers to duplicate what Parliament is already funded to do.”

Background

Last year, accounting officers led by Mr Pius Bigirimana of the Labour and Gender ministry and Kampala Capital City Authority executive director Jennifer Musisi, asked the MPs to ‘repent their sins” and asked Ms Alice Alaso (former Public Accounts Committee (PAC) chairperson) to warn MPs against asking for ‘facilitation’ and ‘bribes’ from the people mandated to account for public funds. The accounting officers complained that MPs had turned it a habit to send emissaries to their offices and that the brave ones approached them demanding facilitation yet there is always no budget for such inducements.

Ms Alaso provoked the debate when she warned the permanent secretaries to stop the practice of sending “emissaries” to her office with bribes. The accounting officers accused MPs of putting witnesses at ransom and blackmailing bureaucrats who appear before them on account that if they don’t facilitate them, they should be prepared to face “hard time” when they appear before the accountability committees to answer queries from Auditor General’s reports.

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