{UAH} Vote to Amend the Constitution

Becky, you are entitled to your opinion about the new constitution. But as to your question as whether it works, that is a discussion for another day.  It might work but work badly. It is an attendant at a "Returns Booth" in a store telling me to keep an item that I want to return...telling me that the item works would not convince me to keep an item that I don't like. May be I don't like the color, may be it consumes too much energy, etc

My request is that EIGHT members of the Council should allow ordinary members to vote on this matter.

I am not saying that you should agree with my views.  All I am asking you to do, is to allow members a chance to vote on it.  If I am wrong, members will vote down my petition. If you think that most members like the new constitution, then you should trust their judgment to vote the right way.

thanks

 

For a faster response please contact me at 415.789.6427

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From: Becky Wamala-Brown <beckywamalabrown@sbcglobal.net>
To: joseph.musoke@ymail.com
Sent: Friday, August 16, 2013 3:03 PM
Subject: UNAALIST Amend the Constitution

Joseph,

 

Really, go back to the old constitution?

This phrase reminds of the Transformers-a pure Transformer!

You really believe this?

I am so glad we have the new constitution.

It works, don't you think?

 

Becky

From: Joseph Musoke <joseph.musoke@ymail.com>
To: beckywamalabrown@sbcglobal.net
Sent: Thursday, August 15, 2013 11:53 PM
Subject: UNAALIST Amend the Constitution

Dear UNAA Council,
I would like you to vote to allow UNAA members to vote on a petition to go back to the old constitution, with one exception: keep the definition of a voter (limit voters to people in North America).
Here are some of reasons:

1. the Secretary got too much power. As we have seen this year, the Secretary can easily abuse the power she got, much the same way that a President could abuse power under the old constitution. 

2. the new constitution created so may pockets of power that lead to inefficiency. e.g when we needed overflow hotels, the local organizing committee led the negotiations with the hotels, then sent the list to the President, then the President has to get the approval of the Council, then the Council sends it back to the President...meantime, the Board of Trustees are also peeking as supervisors of the Executive..all this effort is for just one contract! Under the old constitution, the President and the Council were all sitting together.

3. the new constitution created so many positions: 7 on the Board of Trustees, 8 on the Executive and 24 on the Council...if all positions are filled and a meeting is convened where each member of the Council is given an average of 5 minutes to talk, the meeting would last a minimum of 2 hrs!

I am not even sure how a meeting of 24 people can be controlled.  That is a seminar!

4. Amendments initiated by members require the approval of 2/3...even if 98% of members wanted an amendment, they can't do it unless they get 75% of the Council to agree to the amendment. e.g today, FOUR members of the Council can block amendments supported by 400 members! In other words, the Council is placed above the members, yet the members should be supreme!
5. the qualification for leadership are not clear. It seems like the constitution clearly lays out the minimum qualifications but we have seen the Election Commission also come up with its own qualifications which are far and above what the constitution requires.
6. we should not have a constitutional provision that says that the election Commission should collect candidate fees. This clause has allowed the Election Commission to set very high fees that most candidates could not afford.  In my view, their job should be to just organize free and fair elections.
7. There should not be any unelected leaders on the Executive. If the elected leaders feel that they need help/advice of anyone, they should be free to consult/delegate responsibilities to those people and the elected leader that delegates that duty would still be ultimately responsible for the performance of the duty. e.g 3 or 4 years ago, I warned against creating 2 Finance positions because it would lead to endless blame games between the 2 people. That is what is happening now. The Treasurer and the Director of Finance are blaming each other for the delay in producing the books. At the same time, the Director of Development is more involved in the convention activities than the elected leaders, except Ms Nairuba. If things go badly in Dallas, we'll have to blame it on the President because it happened on his watch and he chose his team in 2011...but the reality is that he is hardly involved in day to day running of the most important activity in the association and just calls into the conference calls like any local volunteer.

8. The Board of Trustees should be eliminated.  They are unelected but they have too much power. Mr. Nekyon gave four examples of why we need the BoT but I give my answers next to each:
      a) "Nascent and continuous conflict between the exectutive and the board"-we still have such conflicts

      b) "A president with powers that were unchecked"- the President had 1 vote on the Board. He could be out-voted. Besides, BoT chairman and  UNAA secretary have too much power too. The Secretary has not even been reporting to the President!

     c) "A need for an arbiter incase there was a conflict between the executive and the council"-if we go back to old constitution, there is no Council.

     d) "Creation of a Fountain of wisdom for the UNAA as a whole": as we have seen so far, this is not true.
Inm my view, we should just make it easier to recall our leaders.

8. There are so many inconsistencies. e.g the Secretary is the custodian of UNAA books but the BoT is also a custodian of the same books.

Ugandan North America Association . 1337 Massachusetts Avenue . Suite 153 . Arlington. MA . 02476

Email: info@unaa.org

Ugandan North America Association . 1337 Massachusetts Avenue . Suite 153 . Arlington. MA . 02476

Email: info@unaa.org