Does Uganda need parliamentary elections?
By M. Suleman
29th Nov 2010
I have no doubt in my mind that the best people to answer this question would be the presidential candidates. Before they even complete their campaign errands around the country, what they have seen and heard is already enough for them to answer the question posed by the title of this article.
The abject poverty, the suffering, the anxiety, and the hopelessness in our country should make us double our efforts to defeat Museveni at whatever cost; regardless of what the constitution stipulates.
While it is now accepted by many Ugandans that participating in the presidential race under the current conditions is itself a gamble for opposition leaders, I wonder whether they think it is worth having another gamble with parliamentary elections.
For me, the simple answer is that regardless of the enthusiasm shown by our politicians, there are serious obstacles that make it impossible to conduct parliamentary elections that not only portray the wishes of the people but also produce the type of leaders required to rebuild a post Museveni Uganda.
To begin with, the country has no credible, competent, and impartial Electoral Commission [EC]. Most of its officials are almost open supporters of the ruling NRM. Twenty five years of living under a one party state that survives on patronage has meant that even EC jobs are only dished out to NRM cadres.
Even if there were some impartial EC officials appointed with cooperation from the opposition, NRM cadres have accumulated so much ill-gotten wealth that these EC officials will find the temptation to take bribes from them almost impossible to resist.
Thirdly, there are simply too many constituencies to be contested and yet the current EC has no capacity to conduct such a massive election exercise. The mess of the NRM primaries showed us all that a lot of preparatory work needs to be done before conducting such massive elections.
If meaningful parliamentary elections are to be held, then they need to be conducted separately; not at the same time with the presidential, mayoral, and LC elections.
It is also meaningless to conduct parliamentary elections with the current crop of NRM politicians who, just like their NRM party that thinks it’s entitled to govern Uganda indefinitely because it ‘fought’, also think they are ‘entitled’ to become MPs or even Ministers by hook or crook.
With such conditions in place, the opposition parties will never be able to compete as equal contestants in any election under Museveni’ watch. It is as if the NRM is merely doing the opposition a favour by allowing its leaders to contest.
All the institutions established by the 1995 constitution are only there to help entrench Museveni’s one party state. And the NRM’s Kyankwanzi political school is the mother of them all. All civil servants are conscripted into this school and brainwashed with obvious results for all to see.
Today, most of the corrupt politicians are graduates of Kyankwanzi whose interests are very different from that of Uganda and her people. So to have elections which would recycle these cadres back into parliament would be disastrous for the country.
On top of that, it has been a consistent policy of Mr Museveni to remove patriotic and competent Ugandans from politics and that has left parliament packed with individuals who spend most of their time sleeping and waiting to be woken up to vote for NRM laws which they do not even understand.
So we cannot have elections merely to have another Museveni Parliament. Ugandans need to come out with new guidelines to enable them elect patriotic and competent Ugandans to carry out nationalistic parliamentary work.
By nature, the NRM is a predatory institution and the current Parliament is merely an arm of that predatory institution. The huge salaries that our MPs have awarded themselves are the best evidence of that. They have become ‘honourable thieves’. For them, being an MP is just a job; not the honour that it was once known to be.
All this renders them incapable of steering pro-democracy policies through the House. So if MPs are unlikely to contribute to the building of a new Uganda, then what is the use of wasting time and money to elect them?
In short, and regardless of the enthusiasm shown across the board, Ugandans need to note that their parliament, like all other NRM structures, will not serve or change Uganda for the better. It will simply destroy it.
So Ugandans need to be resilient and vote out Museveni and then re-set their country. In fact I think if a new President were to be elected, he or she will need to dissolve the ‘rich by night Parliament’ as soon as he or she takes office.
Uganda urgently needs a new beginning and if it doesn’t come through this election, then Ugandans will have to get it through other means. END. Please log into www.ugandacorrespondent.com every Monday to read our top stories and anytime mid-week for our news updates.
