The Alliance for National Transformation (ANT) acting national coordinator, Alice Alaso has said as of now, the Parliament is too weakened to defend the constitution and too detached from the realities of the average Ugandan to achieve anything meaningful.
Alaso made the comments in regard of the MPs Shs200million that was remitted to each of the 529 legislators and the 26 ex-officio, something she said was not necessary at the moment given the current situation.
“This is a debate which happens every five years with the same outcomes: outrage by Ugandans, justifications by some MPs, silence by others and then on to the next big news. The reality is, we need to look at the bigger structural problem and context in which such decisions are being made,” she said in a statement.
“At issue in all of this, is functionality and relevance of the Parliament of Uganda. As of now, parliament is too weakened to defend the constitution, too weakened to say no to the excesses of the regime and too detached from the realities of the average Ugandan,” she added.
She noted that even with the car money out of the picture, there simply isn’t much value for money invested in facilitating parliament.
“Even outside of parliament, this government has over the years propagated a politics of patronage in which supporters get rewarded and everyone else gets side-lined. The result is that in Uganda, politics is understood as an end in itself; not a means to serve but an opportunity for self-gratification,” she said.
Alaso said politicians get elected by paying the voters, then once elected, look for ways of getting paid themselves.
She said until voters understand the relationship between a bloated parliament, the cost of public administration (which includes cars) and the need for value-based governance, the country will continue to have more of the same patronage machinery and wanton creation of administrative units.
“It is hard for anyone to reconcile the Shs200million disbursement at one of the most difficult times in the history of our country. Worse still is that there has been no demand for accountability for the trillions of Covid-19 funds mismanaged by the government? And yet, the bigger story here is that in Uganda today, this is what normal looks like,” she said.
She said that this government is run mainly by individuals with an acute shortage of values and cannot be expected to be frugal, moral, or act in the public’s interest especially in the use of taxpayers’ money.
