Government, MPs lock horns on independents, political financing

The government team on Tuesday made noticeable concessions in the committee scrutinising the proposed electoral reforms, dropping some controversial provisions and defended others with fortitude.

Justice and Constitutional Affairs Minister Maj Gen (rtd) Kahinda Otafiire and the Deputy Attorney General Mr Mwesigwa Rukutana were appearing before the House Committee on Legal and parliamentary Affairs, to defend the five bills on electoral reforms.

The five bills mainly seek to provide regulations for independent candidates and aligning the 2018 Constitutional amendment that lifted the upper age cap for a presidential candidate.

The first score for Independents was to repeal the provision that requires independent candidates to present a discharge certificate from their political parties.

“We hereby concede that Clause 9A (2) be modified by deleting the last sentence we stop at political party or organisation,” Mr Rukutana said.

“We delete the words ‘…and was discharged by political party or organisation’ we delete those,” he added.

The Presidential Elections (amendment) Bill, 2019 under 9A (2) and the Parliamentary Elections (amendment) Bill, 2019 under 10A (2) prescribed for qualification for an independent candidate.

They read; “an independent candidate shall be taken to have ceased to be a member of a political party or organisation …if that person has complied with the constitution, rules and regulations of the political party or organisation to which he or she belonged, that relate to cessation of membership of that political party or organisation, and was discharged by the political party or organization.”

The new arrangement implies that if adopted after government concession, proof of discharge will not be a requirement

The government however declined to surrender to pressure from members to expunge the requirement for independent candidates to have resigned from their political parties, at least a year before election calendar.

“You can opt for leadership basing on a political party or as an independent, the question is when and how do you do it, you cannot come today and say I am FDC am contesting under FDC you go through their constitution and when you lose you turn around and brand yourself independent,” said Mr Rukutana.

But debate on the provisions for resignation from the party before standing as an independent, have been left for debate during plenary after members and the ministers failed to agree.

The committee which is composed of 19 per cent of independent MPs and chaired by Jacob Oboth Oboth (West Budama South) also an independent, described the move as bias.

The area of contention is that many independents have been victims of unjust electoral processes within political parties.

Mr Abdu Katuntu (FDC, Bugweri) asked the ministers not to legislate for unfair systems that confine people to undemocratic party processes.

“Don’t make political parties prisons, the law should help them to be attractive to recruitment; the process recruitment and retention of membership of political parties is solely on the party and not on the law, the parties should be more palatable for people to come and join,” he said.

Mr Katuntu added: “Don’t use the law to keep people in parties because if they dot fall into a particular party then they are in trouble, they lose a chance to participate in the political process.”

Another heated debate surrounds the provision for declaration of source of funding for candidates even money from donors and totals received yet the proposals are silent on amounts of money tolerable for each candidate.

“This is going to be one of the most controversial clauses because even in the National Budget you don’t indicate how much you will get from which donor,” said Mr Oboth Oboth.

Mr Rukutana said that candidates will have to present their resource muscle, lest they suffer the repercussion of noncompliance.

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