[UAH] Ssemujju Nganda: We are sweating to pick Museveni’s bills
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12:52 PM |
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Considering that in our final year the election fever will have caught on, we have just about one and half productive years to end the ninth Parliament. From my experience as a parliamentary reporter for nearly 11 years, if there is any value to extract from a particular Parliament, it must be done so during its first two to three years.
In the final two years of their term, MPs tend to avoid anything that will jeopardise their hold onto their seats. Ruling party MPs tend to become more sycophantic including those with known liberal thinking and approach.
This may partly explain why Raphael Magyezi, the Igara west MP who until recently was considered as one of the best-performing MPs worked with Kalungu Woman MP Florence Kintu to produce a report about the Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) – a report that MPs believe was forged.
Florence Kintu, the chairperson of the committee on Local Government and Public Service, could be considered average but Magyezi is certainly above average. An assistant clerk is attached to each committee of Parliament and his/her duty is to record proceedings and facilitate report writing.
Kintu and Magyezi locked out the clerk in the final meeting that drafted the report. According to our rules, the chairperson of a committee is not supposed to deliberate while chairing a meeting.
This means that since Magyezi turned himself into a clerk/secretary and Kintu a chair, there was actually no meeting because one was chairing and the other, taking minutes. This is how fraudulent, parliamentary processes have become. And such fellows have inevitably attracted bribery accusations.
They wrote the report on May 12, which was a Sunday, and flouted all known rules of report writing in Parliament.That is why some of us chose to put our feet down – and our voices up – when the Deputy Speaker Jacob Oulanyah attempted to facilitate passage of this forged report.
This forged report, just like some media commentators, gives an impression that the chaos in Kampala is created because Lord Mayor Ssalongo Erias Lukwago is fighting with Musisi. I want to state without fear of contradiction that Lukwago is not fighting Musisi.
It is Museveni fighting Lukwago to achieve his long-desired objective of fully gaining control of Kampala, probably the only remaining productive part of Buganda. The unfortunate bit is that our people are too forgetful. If they were not, they would have remembered that the Kampala district Land Board, chaired by Yusuf Nsibambi, was the first institution to be destroyed.
You also ought to know that Museveni is currently running Kampala through Frank Tumwebaze, the minister in charge of Kampala and Hashaka Mpimbaza, the Resident City Commissioner and their other allies. To them to develop Kampala, you must replace Baganda with Banyankore in management. And a Byaruhanga, a councillor for Kyambogo at KCCA, is the one spearheading a motion to impeach Lukwago. I have nothing against people from the west because many suffer even more than us, but the clique purporting to represent them has forced us into this dilemma.
The lord mayor is accused of not convening meetings but all sane people have watched the melodrama of councilors refusing to attend or running away when proceedings have opened. With all these excuses, Museveni and his men want to achieve what they failed during the constitutional changes – annex Kampala from Buganda. So when one factors in the debate on the forged report, which wanted to place Kampala directly in the hands of Museveni, you appreciate what Mzee Kikutiya (one who carries money in a sack) is really up to.
You know in last year's budget, Parliament approved Shs 58 billion for State House. The occupants of State House finished it in a record time – three months. As they usually do, they raided the treasury and picked an extra Shs 130 billion. You know the law allows government to use money in excess of the total budget expenditure allocated to an item or department as long as it does not exceed 3% of the original budget. State House used 219% in excess of its original budget.
But most important are the items on which this money has been spent on. The President has spent Shs 49.8 billion on 20 community functions. This means for every up-country function State House has organised, we have spent Shs 2.4 billion. When the President visited Busoga and carried for them a sack containing Shs 250 million, we spent Shs 2.4 billion on organising his visit. They are called community outreach programmes.
To mobilise against poverty, the president has hosted 25 district delegations at State House each costing us Shs 545 million. I think you all know why the man wants Kampala. He wants to get hold of our land and he begins distributing it the way he does with our money.The author is Kyadondo East MP.
semugs@yahoo.com
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"War is nothing but a continuation of political intercourse, with a mixture of other means. Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest."
