Govt triples Ipod funds to Shs35b
Speaking to journalists at their weekly press conference in Kampala on July 5, 2022, DP president Norbert Mao said the money will be distributed according to the number of delegates each party has in Parliament. PHOTO/ SHABIBAH NAKIRIGYA
All political parties under the Inter-party Organisation for Dialogue (Ipod) are set receive Shs35b after the government tripled its funding towards financing of their activities.
The parties will receive the money beginning this financial year. They have previously been receiving Shs10b annually.
The money is shared by political parties with representatives in Parliament. These include the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM), National Unity Platform (NUP), Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), Democratic Party (DP) , Uganda People’s Congress (UPC) , Justice Forum (Jeema) and People’s Progressive Party (PPP).
Speaking to journalists at their weekly press conference in Kampala yesterday, DP president Norbert Mao said the money will be distributed according to the number of delegates each party has in Parliament.
This means that the NRM party, which has majority MPs, gets the biggest share, followed by NUP, the biggest Opposition party.
“Through Ipod, funding to political parties has been increased and DP will continue advocating that the government should fund political parties out of taxpayers’ money to avoid foreigners infiltrating our politics,” Mr Mao said
Purpose for cash
He said they are being supported to implement party activities such as building civil service through capacity strengthening programmes.
Parties were supported to hire accountants, administrators and political analysts.
“Ipod also organised trainings on diverse topics, including conflict resolution. Some people think only DP has conflicts but all parties have. Ipod helped them to manage conflicts because it is its nature of operation,” Mr Mao said.
He added that in March last year,DP initiated an Ipod summit during which they appealed to the President to release political detainees immediately. The President ordered the release of 60 detainees.
“Unfortunately, we were not thanked but insulted,” the DP president said.
Mr Mao, however, said Ipod faced some challenges, including failure to implement passed resolutions, failure to tackle tough political issues and failure to push for national dialogue.
He also said Ipod has issued new MoU and three political parties have already endorsed their signatures. They include NRM, Jeema and DP.
“We expect UPC and FDC to sign because we negotiated the MoU together. We continue to appeal to the Leader of Opposition in Parliament to reconsider its position, we have made sure that there is blank space for them because they are not members of Ipod until they sign,” the DP leader said.
