Parliament has not doubled MPs’ salary

We had no interest to respond to Daily Monitor’s false stories that MPs have budgeted to double their pay to Shs24m each, had the paper not insisted on peddling the falsehood.

The false story also ignited Ms Cissy Kagaba, the boss of the Anti-Corruption Coalition, to make unsupported claims about MPs’ purported increased pay. In fact, Ms Kagaba said in her article that the Ministry of Finance and Parliament kept the proposal out of the public eye.

Of course, anyone expects a person of Ms Kagaba’s stature to be grounded on the national Budget process and, in fact, follow it diligently. An anti-corruption watchdog should not be over reliant on media reports without capacity to verify.

The budget is about to be read and it’s not anywhere that the Parliamentary Commission, which is mandated to care for the welfare of MPs and staff, has asked for a pay increment.

The Commission budget proposals are submitted to the Ministry of Finance like any other sector proposals, to be consolidated into the national Budget. Speaker of Parliament Rebecca Kadaga told the plenary last week that there was no plan to raise MPs salary.

Commissioner Peter Ogwang, who heads the Commission’s Committee on Finance and Administration, told Daily Monitor that MPs were aware of the national pressing needs thus had not planned any salary increment.

Even the Secretary to the Treasury, Keith Muhakanizi, told Daily Monitor that he had no idea about the alleged planned increment. Mr Muhakanizi directly supervises the national Budget.

If the journalistic principle of skepticism about the honesty of those who hold public offices, influenced the decision to publish and propagate the story, then that is an undisputable right.

However, that right should have been weighed against the journalistic demand that the story is built on verifiable facts, fairness and balance. Freedom from legal action for reporting false news is not freedom from devotion to the traditional demands of journalism - commitment to truth seeking. Reporting false news should be a mortifying mistake to any serious journalist.

Respect for the reader is demonstrated by giving them what is verifiable, not what hypnotises them. What the reporters touted as a leaked budget paper was a half-page print-out possibly of someone’s concoction on their computer or simply a Nasser Road (a street in Kampala known for printing fake official documents) job.

A budget framework paper is a public document and that is why it has to be presented before Parliament for budget legitimisation. Surely, a hardworking and committed journalist should be capable of getting the document!

The story simply fed the wrong perception that MPs earn too much and that Parliament has loads of money; never mind that the budget of Parliament has, for years, never exceeded Shs500b (1.2 per cent of the national Budget).

Holding Parliament to account is a public duty for every citizen and it is welcomed by MPs across the political spectrum, but it is a knowledge intensive duty. One needs to understand the issue without being coloured by personal motivations then suggest viable options to make Parliament work better.

Majority elite know and appreciate in privacy that Ugandan MPs face financial pressures from the constituents. They also know that Ugandan MPs are the least remunerated in the region. However, because the wrong public perception is that MPs earn big, the elite crave to associate with the perception in order to gain visibility.

We need to confront the growing national culture of some people expecting others to meet their personal needs. Most of us who work are confronted with this reality daily as our relatives and friends expect free lunch. It gets more stressful for MPs, therefore; any false mention of MPs pay increment attracts them more problems.

There is no pay increment and there is no such proposal. Let us hold MPs to account, but we should not make a mistake of building our democracy by undermining the institution of Parliament, which is so central in governance. It is counterproductive.

Mr Obore is the director of communications
and public affairs at Parliament.
[email protected]