Madam Speaker, take action against corrupt lawmakers

Recently, Speaker of Parliament Rebecca Kadaga attended the parliamentary forum on ethics and integrity where she expressed deep concern about Members of Parliament (MPs) who seem to have abandoned their legislative work and responsibilities.
The forum was chaired by former Ethics minister, Dr Nsaba Buturo (Bufumbira East MP).
“MPs have been coming to the House to clock in and go away. You also go to the committees where you sign and move from workshop to workshop signing. All that is corruption. The fact that we are examples in society, let us perform,” Ms Kadaga said.

The Speaker’s comments on corruption in Parliament seemed surprising. One would have expected her to propose stringent and effective measures to curb corruption in Parliament. The other option would have been to talk about the repercussions for MPs engaging in corruption.
But the issue of some MPs lacking ethics or integrity is not new. Over the last few years, MPs falsely claiming and signing for money has been reported without repercussions or any form of punishment.
In November 2014, the Speaker recognised that through corruption at Parliament, MPs were making money in several different ways. The Speaker disclosed that:

1) MPs were not attending plenary sessions and yet claiming for backdated attendance allowances and payments.
2) MPs continued backdating their signatures to days when they were not at Parliament, and
3) They were switching flights from parliamentary travels and returning home with substantial taxpayer money in form of allowances for work not done.
At that time, the Speaker warned MPs and threatened that the punishment for such behaviour would follow, that the culprits’ allowances for plenary sessions would be deducted as punishment to deter corruption. It seems this did not come to pass.
And almost five years later, Parliament has not been able to effectively managed corruption despite installing electronic registration for MPs.

There is also a perception that MPs generally earn high salaries and live lavish lifestyles. In most cases travel expenses are as much as $520 (Shs1.9 million) for foreign travels per day. MPs can easily make more money through foreign trips on top of their close to Shs30m monthly salaries.
However, as voters continue experiencing poverty, MPs turned a blind eye to their plight and recently decided to increase their allowances. The MPs increased their allowances by almost 40 per cent. They cited challenges that all Ugandans are facing such as rising costs of living, increased cost of food and energy.

The country watched as MPs used Article 79 (1) of the Constitution that states that “subject to the provisions of this Constitution, Parliament shall have power to make laws on any matter for the peace, order, development and good governance of Uganda” to justify their allowance increments.
The total cost to taxpayers for the new allowances for 459 MPs is estimated at an additional Shs63.46b in the 2019/20 Budget, increasing the House budget from the current Shs497.8b to Shs561.3b.

And this is on top of Parliament continuing to operate without implementing any sanctions against “corrupt” MPs. It is not unreasonable, therefore, to say that for some MPs performing their roles – making laws, appropriating public resources, providing oversight on the spending and representing views of their constituents – has turned in to a private business.
Although in 2013 President Museveni signed into law the National Ethical Values Policy, enforcement seems to remain a significant challenge as we can see from the conduct of some MPs.