Kadaga, Oulanyah in eye of oil storm

You cannot play with the animal in you without becoming wholly animal, play with falsehood without forfeiting your right to truth, play with cruelty without losing your sensitivity of mind. He who wants to keep his garden tidy doesn’t reserve a plot for weeds — Dag Hammarskjold

It is sad that our Parliament has degenerated into a national disaster. One cannot resist the temptation to bang a table for our MPs — the voting machines. These people need to be reminded why they are in Parliament. That, Parliament is not all about filling seats whenever there is voting on a contentious issue, and then instinctively trooping to the Canteen to waste time in endless gossip.

The politics in the proposed oil law — The Petroleum (Exploration, Development and Production) Bill, 2012 - has exposed the Parliament we have today to the extent that the people we send to conduct business on our behalf no longer care whether they are naked or not.

In this spectacle, the most unfortunate part is that the Speaker, Ms Rebecca Kadaga, and her Deputy Jacob Oulanyah, who should have protected the independence and integrity of the House, appear to be stuck. This prompts us to think through the idea of having a free Speaker in real sense — the one who does not have apologies to make. That Speaker would serve one master — the public interest.

Since we have a Speaker who is required to serve two masters at the same time, Parliament finds itself in a funny situation. The doctrine of separation of powers as contained in the 1995 Constitution is just on paper. This is unfortunate. We have a President who is too powerful to the extent that he can order the Speaker to overturn the unfriendly decisions Parliament makes. It doesn’t matter whether such decisions are in public interest or not, what matters is that the ruling party has the numbers to do anything, including defeating reason.

For fear that the Energy minister might abuse the powers; Parliament chaired by Mr Oulanyah decided to vest these powers in the Petroleum Authority. The understanding was that by giving these powers to the minister as is the case for cursed oil producing nations like Nigeria, Angola, Sudan and Congo, among others, would plunge Uganda into confusion and deepen corruption.

This decision was reached when the President was out of the country. When he returned from Sri Lanka, he asked Cabinet and NRM MPs to revisit Clause 9. At first, NRM MPs rejected this idea and hence the chaos in |Parliament. On Thursday, the President met them and, as usual, they changed their position. The unsubstantiated claim is that by giving the powers to the authority, Parliament was trying to legislate the President out of the oil sector. However, under the Constitution, the President has the discretion to remain the minister for oil.

As the saying goes, it would be funny if it wasn’t so tragic. Until Parliament votes in accordance with the wishes of their constituents it is nothing more than a rubber stamp for the policies of those in power. This explains why in the handling of the proposed oil law, our parliamentarians, particularly those from the ruling party, the voting machines behaved like unwanted, bloated self-serving hypocrites, inept to see beyond their own dim views of life.

The mendacity of NRM MPs is not peculiar. The problem here is that this kind of bahaviour has made the institution of Parliament a hopeless entity. This is why it’s no longer an issue for a committee chairperson to come on the floor of the House without any report. This kind of naughtiness in the House started with the Budget Committee chairperson, Mr Tim Lwanga, and then Mr Michael Werikhe of Natural Resources Committee. First, Mr Werikhe complained to Speaker Kadaga that his committee was not privy to the negotiated position on the proposed Clause 9 that seeks to give ministers full powers in the oil sector.

The context to Mr Werikhe’s antics is that after Bugweri MP Abdul Katuntu and other members met Energy Minister Irene Muloni, they agreed to have a win-win settlement to the deadlock. They had agreed that the minister would negotiate with companies in liaison with the authority; endorse deals with Cabinet approval and revoke licences on the recommendation of the authority. But because the minister had not consulted the President, these good proposals were rejected.

I am told Ms Muloni was seriously attacked in Cabinet and forced to apologise in the NRM Caucus. Ms Kadaga who had handled the matter was absent. Mr Oulanyah came in to steer the boat. The government used its numerical strength in the House to close all the avenues for compromise and gave minister full power to grant, negotiate and revoke licences. By Friday, a final decision had not been made, but the NRM Caucus had pronounced itself on the matter.

I have pointed out in this column before that the proposed law was left in the hands of “chameleons” and “voting machines”. This is why the government side on Thursday rejected any form of compromise on Clause 9. For accepting to give the minister full powers in the oil law, the 9th Parliament will be condemned in future if Uganda turns into one of the cursed oil nations.

The Global Witness, a UK-based non-governmental organisation which investigates the role of natural resources in funding conflict and corruption around the world, says in its January 2012 report titled: “The scramble for Africa’s Oil, Gas and Minerals” that governments are not making clear the rationale for choosing particular companies in the bidding process and, in certain cases, they appear to allow companies special or preferential access to oil licences, leading to doubts about the integrity of the process.

That corrupt governments are awarding oil licences to companies whose beneficial owners remain undisclosed. In certain cases, there are grounds for suspicion that some of the companies may be owned or controlled by government officials or their private-sector proxies. Countries that are rich in petroleum have less democracy, less economic stability, and more frequent civil wars than countries without oil. This is why, in the proposed oil law, we must get it right.

It should be noted that the allocation of oil or mining rights to companies by governments around the world is often at risk of being compromised by serious corruption, which brings with it a chain of consequences from entrenched poverty and development failures to political instability and armed conflict. Therefore, in pushing through what the President wants, we can afford to defeat justice on technicalities, but let’s not forget that the oil curse is real and once it flinches it’s unstoppable.

ymugerwa@ug.nationmedia.com