The fight for Parliament’s soul

The race for the Speaker position in Parliament has publicly played out in all its ugliness and awkwardness.

The race is between Ms Rebecca Kadaga and her former deputy Jacob Oulanyah. Both are members of the ruling NRM party and both are determined to remain or become Speaker.

Media rumours – that sometimes prove to be true in the end – have it that President Museveni might not back Kadaga for re-election.

Remember, the NRM lost the important block vote in Buganda. Politically, it does not help one’s cause to start a new five-year term with bitter fights at the highest level within the ruling party.

This is the genesis of military coups in Africa. What started as a broad representation of the population in the political process and, to a degree in the economy, goes to the next stage where the media or the Opposition is treated as an enemy of the State.

It is either banned or comes under increasing persecution. It becomes harder and harder for people viewed as Opposition supporters to get jobs, scholarships or government tenders.

Power drains away from the civil service and other State institutions. Formal bureaucratic paperwork and procedure stop mattering much. 

What matters becomes whom you know in the inner corridors of power and influence.

It is easier to control a State when power is in the hands of a few than when it is spread out among institutions and individuals with whom the head of State must constantly negotiate or deal with.

So, as President Museveni declared several weeks ago, over the next five years he will take decisions without first consulting Parliament.

Although this week there was much live media coverage and celebration around the swearing-in of the new Parliament, it will prove to be the most powerless of any since 1996.

Museveni has made it clear that he will ignore it, when he wants.

It is this concentration of power in the hands of a few political elite that is behind the current tensions in Uganda.

More and more power is concentrated in the hands of President Museveni and those close to him. Nobody gets appointed without them approving it, or at least being in support of it.

Parallel institutions

Parallel institutions directly answering to the head of State crop up and compete with formal institutions.

The Uganda Peoples Congress (UPC) government did not collapse in 1985 because it lost the military confrontation to the National Resistance Army (NRA), Federal Democratic Movement  of Uganda (FEDEMU) and UFA. It did not collapse because president Milton Obote had no power. 

The UPC government fell apart because it got to a point where there were people in the State who were “untouchable” and when they had their differences, nothing could be done to reconcile them.

Obote was caught between two equally powerful sides, both of whom he was loyal to and his stay in power depended on, and so amid their tensions, he could not act decisively. 

For those who would argue that it is different today from the UPC in 1985 because Uganda is being ruled by a powerful group and its extended relatives, the facts don’t support such a view.

We had a glimpse of this in the fierce contest between Shartsi Musherure and Godfrey (Sodo) Kaguta Aine for the Mawogola North NRM party flag.

The latter was President Museveni’s brother and the former was the daughter of the minister of Foreign Affairs Sam Kutesa.

The stand-off between Musherure and Aine was so complicated that President Museveni had to personally intervene a few times without success.

Eventually, the NRM had to declare that it would field no official candidate for the seat.

The Musherure-Aine stand-off showed that relatives and in-laws can become fierce competitors. 

The many family wrangles over land and property that end up in Ugandan courts, show that bitterness can run deep even within blood relatives.

The Kadaga-Oulanyah contest is the latest stage of this intra-NRM tension and conflict.

The narrower the centre of power becomes, the more inevitable is a break-up of the entire system.

Powerful people in NRM can fight Kadaga or pit one faction of the party against another.

But the problem with all national power in the hands of one group is this: What happens if President Museveni and say his son, the commander of the elite Special Forces Command fall out, as happens in many families?

What happens in the next five years when all state power is controlled by a small group and a Musherure or Aine is determined to be the minister of Finance or Health or Governor of Bank of Uganda?

Whom does Museveni support over the other and what are the consequences when different factions of the group take each other to court or threaten to deploy loyal sections of the SFC to sort out the tensions?

That is why although this is not a personal endorsement of Kadaga, right now she is the best person to be Speaker because she has publicly fallen out  with some members of that small group. As a Speaker, Kadaga would no longer act as the head of the third branch of State as it checks and holds to account the first branch. 

She would now have very personal reasons for standing her ground against the Executive branch of government. 

This is the ideal checks and balances that Uganda has desired and mostly failed to have since independence.

Having the powerful officials and Kadaga as Speaker on bad terms brings with it some challenges and political tension; but these challenges are nothing when compared with the alternative.

As it stands, if Oulanyah is elected Speaker, he will know that this was made possible by support from State House.

Therefore, he will be as beholden to Museveni as the chairman of the Electoral Commission and most other high-ranking government officials now are.

The worst possible outcome for Uganda for the next five years would be to have a Parliament headed by an all-out NRM cadre.