By Muhimbise George
For a couple of days Members of Parliament have been signing a motion to recall Parliament to censure the four back bench Parliamentary Commissioners over the 1.7 billion shillings they received as a service award.
The MPs claim they are fighting corruption and this time starting from their own house. However Parliament leadership says that this money was passed in the budget and therefore was passed in accordance with the law.
Whereas the moral and legal aspects of the issue remain a subject of debate, the censure of the four Commissioners under the guise that the MPs are fighting corruption remains a big joke. A big joke because the MPs have opted to go for a silver fish (mukene) while crocodiles are left swimming!
It’s unfortunate that the legislators have chosen to play to the gallery, to hoodwink the suspecting public when they don’t mean what they say and when many of them have failed their core mandate.
A case in point the NUP has threatened to deal with its MPs who don’t append their signatures on the censure. To those in the shadow cabinet, I am told they have been told that whoever doesn’t sign will be reshuffled. In this case several opposition MPs are signing to prove that they are opposition and also to avoid the bullying by NUP supporters should they not sign.
To those in NRM, the main complaint is that Commissioners are highly facilitated with fuel while their colleague MPs are suffering without fuel or money to run their Constituencies. In this case it’s not about corruption but rather envy that some people are eating more than others.
The MPs know that Commissioners receive more emoluments (eat more) than ordinary MPs and that’s why they proposed in the NRM Caucus that they should elect Commissioners. Indeed over 200 MPs had applied to be nominated for Commissioner jobs until the NRM decided to retain the incumbents.
In this case, Hon Odria Arion who is among those leading the censure process had applied to be a Commissioner and when this didn’t materialize, he raised a complaint in Parliament to challenge the re-appointment of NRM Commissioners against the NRM caucus position.
The other issue is that most NRM MPs have been dormant in the house and so are looking for relevancy before their voters. They feel this motion can resurrect their political fortunes.
If the MPs are genuinely interested in fighting corruption how come they have been silent on many other scandals that even involved more money? The Lubowa Hospital scandal has so far cost Ugandans over 300 billion shillings and there is nothing on the ground. Have these MPs attempted to censure the Minister of Health or Finance who release this money? Minister of Science and Technology Dr Musenero got over 30 billion for construction of the factory to manufacture the Covid 19 factory, did they censure her?
The Cooperative money scandal involved over 130 billion and it has never been resolved, did these MPs raise any complaints? The Minister of Gender Labor and Social Development Beti Among was implicated in the NSSF scandal, did the MPs censure her? Atiak sugar and many other project’s have received billions and billions of un accounted for funds, did these MPs fight this kind of corruption?
With all those and many more corruption scandals, why would the 1.7 billion become a more pressing issue than the hundreds of billions lost in the above mentioned scandals?
Therefore MPs should stop playing cheap politics and hoodwinking Ugandans. What they are doing is like following up someone who is suspected to have taken a bunch of matooke from your garden yet others have taken 100 cows from you and you are silent. To borrow words of Ibrahim Ssemuju Nganda, “it’s like leaving a place where murder has been committed and you go to where dogs have fought from”. Our MPs can only be useful to us by saving the many billions of money being stolen in various government departments than following the so-called ‘service awards’
Muhimbise George,
muhimbiseg@gmail.com, 0787836515
