{UAH} Mutebi Henry writes to the speaker

My Open Letter to the Speaker of Parliament of Uganda. 

Dear Madam Speaker,

I find myself in a not very enviable position to be writing a letter to a person who has for years dedicated herself to fighting for social justice and has no doubt laudable emulation for what leaders should be.  

From your record and contribution madam speaker, with a sound record of public service, it seems obvious that I should not cast a single stone of blame or load you with the responsibility of facing questions for which answers you may not have. However, I find myself, this minute, at great pains to find the right person to ask, to question and to raise my concerns and the pains I bear. 

I would have addressed this letter to the President, but madam speaker, our president is sadly, surrounded by many people whose job is to lie and fence him from hearing from citizens about their issues and concerns. There is a big choir of people whose full time job is to sing praises to the president, tell him everything is alright and to shout at anyone who wishes to convey a message that the president could potential take interest in and make appropriate follow up. 

Those who raise questions or want to bring to the attention of the president an issue are labelled opposition and the ideas and concerns of citizens are lost in that designed confusion. It is this kind of fence technically built around our president that puts me in the not very comfortable position of seeking answers from you. It will not be my intention in this letter to doubt your ability or downplay your contribution, but to do my constitutional and moral duty to ask you and our leaders to reflect on the issues I will raise herein and to seek an answer or follow up. 

Madam speaker, I am 30 years old and I fall in the age bracket of the majority of Uganda's productive age group. The beauty and burden of this age is that you stand in the middle of the past and the future. Behind us are our parents who have given so much to give us an education in the hope that we can take care of them when the dictates of nature and economy send them in the trenches of vulnerability. 

These parents spent literally everything they had to give us an education and we have a debt to pay. On the other hand, ahead of us, are children, who look to us as their hope, as the givers and providers. Children look at us with hope that their dreams are in our hands, that we will give them best shot at life. This position, madam speaker is not an enviable one to be in. We carry the burden of the past and the future, even when our own present circumstances are barely solid enough to guarantee our own personal and immediate needs for survival. 

Madam speaker, we are deeply aware of our debt, to care and love our parents and children, our brothers and sisters and the duty to put our hands to work to meet their needs. Alongside this duty to provide to our loved ones, we all also carry the duty and burden of paying our taxes so that we contribute to our collective needs as a society. Luckily, the state has been effective in ensuring that we all, or at least majority of citizens do their duty of paying taxes. Madam speaker, our hope in paying taxes is that the state is able to plan, with your guidance to help society address those needs for which our individual hands are too short to address. In paying taxes, we have honored the noblest call to every citizen, the deepest expression of love for your country. Madam speaker, we have loved our country and we expect our country to love us back. 

Madam speaker, our parents may not have been lucky to get an education, but even then, they understood the value of education and gave everything they could to ground us ahead so that we can be their advocates, we can engage the actors in the state, to make good on their promises; To act in good faith and deliver on their part. Many of these, our parents and grand parents who paid our fees, and many of whom voted for you leaders in parliament, do not have the means, the language or even capacity to question, to ask, to fight or seek answers. Some even voted to send you to parliament which they do not even know where it seats or is housed. They however, paid for us to get an education so that we may be their advocates. It is this delegated power we have been given as young people (I believe) that we use to speak on behalf of our families to raise our concerns to you our leaders. 

Some of them are too sick, frail and down to engage you, or have been broken by the burden of poverty and disease that they find themselves without ability to even raise their voice to engage their leaders. Some do not even understand their relationship with the state or what to expect from the state. They hope, that the leaders have the integrity to act with diligence and for the good of all.  

Madam speaker, Edmund Burke once remarked that, 'to make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely' or at least love us. Last year, there was a big outcry about the breakdown of the cancer machine in Mulago hospital. I cannot put in words, the pain that so many patients have gone through because of this breakdown. I cannot, madam speaker put in numbers, how many people have possibly died due to the lack of these services in our hospitals. Yet during the same period, when a whole nation should have been on its hunt for resources to address this issue within the shortest time possible, we were constantly told there is no money or it will be worked upon later. To date, there is no clear communication on progress of this issue, what has been done and how government is helping patients cope.

The death of one of Uganda's most dedicated health professionals, Dr. Margret Mungherera, who died from abroad seeking treatment for cancer, is to us, the greatest shame as a country. It is something that should make you camp at Mulago and demand that no parliament business proceeds without a proper explanation or communication on what has been done or how far it has been done. The news of presidential handshakes is the most insulting news that Ugandans can ever be treated to. I do not for even a single second understand how our leaders find the pleasure and courage to live in comfort, while their own people die in hospitals without any show of concern. Were people who were given a presidential handshake retiring as to demand such urgency for a handshake? How many more cases are they are going to handle? How many handshakes will the government have to give them for all the cases they will handle in the years to come? where is the conscience of our society? 

I do write to blame you, but to cry out our pains and to show you that we feel so tired that nobody seems to care about those who are on hospital beds and can no longer manage to raise their voices to seek for help. They are not peaceful madam speaker, they need your intervention as leaders. 

Madam speaker, is it the money we do not have or it is the priorities we get wrong? How do we accept that we do not have money when we hear all these billions put to waste, shared between individuals? Madam speaker, I have not heard and am not suggesting that you are personally engaged in any of these money sharing scandals but as the leader of parliament, that appropriates resources to the different departments of government, it should bother you that two contradicting realities exist. On the one hand government officials are always able to find money to meet their priorities while the needs of the population like the cancer machine take forever to be addressed. 

Madam speaker like Edmond said, the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing and sometimes silence can be violence. We demand madam speaker, that you take visible clear action to give us an update of how far the cancer machine issue has been addressed. Those people in cancer wards in the hospitals have paid their taxes and in all fairness they deserve help in moments like this. In this era when anyone who asks government to take action or seek answers is labelled as  'opposition', I find no other person to express my frustration at the slow progress on these issues than you madam speaker. Not because you have not taken action before, but because I believe in your ability to make things move. 

The need for government to address the citizens has been reduced to merely a fight between President museveni and Dr. Besigye. The cheer leaders on both sides flame the fires, throwing aside the citizens concerns and merely looking at the engagement as a fight between the president and the opposition. In between these fights are lay people, who die in the hospitals, your voters, people who diligently pay their taxes to maintain the privileges and opportunities you have as our leaders. We demand some form of follow up on these issues. We demand some social justice for these people. We demand some respect for our parents and grandparents who are tossed by disease and die while we watch. We appreciate the role of Government however; we also demand that the government honours its duty to provide indemnity for those whose needs only our collective wealth (taxes) can meet. 

I must ask the favour of you to take action on this matter. Madam speaker, perhaps our leaders have medical insurance and they are insulated from the reality of most of the Ugandans, and so their reality is different from ours, but we ask of you to remember the people that pay those taxes, the people that pay for members of parliament's benefits. We ask the government to care about the supervision of hospitals, the schools and all institutions that are necessary for the functioning of our society.  At the bottom of it all, what tax payers are asking of you is a show of concern. 

Of all the terrible things that can happen to a human being madam speaker, the worst of all, is to watch your loved die when you know someone, somewhere could have done something about it. Something can be done about the situation in hospitals. If people are able to write to the president and suggest that they be given a handshake, which Ugandan would condemn anyone for writing to the president to use part of the so called oil money to buy a cancer machine? How is it possible that money is always found for these personal requests but the patients are not seen as a priority? Who can do something about the hospitals? Who can do something about the cancer machine and all the other essential services that patients need to keep our population healthy? Who can put the staff in these hospitals to work? Who can apportion money for these priorities? Madam speaker, I do not know the answers…but I believe you have a role to play in making our society function. 

Madam speaker, we have so many unspoken things and we do not even know how much of what we have to say, but the pains are great. Madam speaker watching our leaders driving good cars, building plazas and having handshakes when people are dying in hospitals is total social injustice. It is not explainable, it is not defendable, it is not acceptable. While my grandmother cannot speak out, at 30 years of age, it is my duty to speak up for my family and for those that will come after me. We feel a lot of social injustice and do not believe that the government has no money to address some of these pressing issues. Today we hear there is no money for this, that very afternoon, we hear so and so had been given 200 million. It is just too much madam speaker and we demand some respect as tax payers. 

Madam speaker, Ugandans are a polite people, and their generosity ought to be reciprocated by some measure of respect from the government. While I can use a pen to write to you madam speaker, and can understand the limitations of how much government can do and not do, I am not sure madam speaker, how in future you will deal with an unemployed young population, that sees no hope, has nothing to lose and watches you our leaders talking in billions, cruising in good cars and continuing in unison to say, the government has no money. I do not know how you will deal with young people who feel ignored, whose issues never catch your attention, whose demands and needs have gotten lost in the personalized politics which has buried the issues and reduced Ugandans' concerns to Besigye vs Museveni. The engagement has been lost in there. Issues are seen as with either a Besigye face or Museveni face. It is attack or defence and never a dialogue on what concerns the citizens. Most Ugandans just want a good day, a good future for their children regardless of who is president, but their concerns are swallowed up in the politics.

Madam speaker, as I end this letter, I feel a great sense of great love for my country, but I also feel a sense of rejection. The burden of being 30 years old madam speaker, leaves me with no option, but the duty to stand up for my family, my society and my country as we carry the burden of those who have raised us and also addressing the needs of those we must raise. It is this burden that unsettles me. I do not ask for food for my family madam speaker, but I do ask Government to address the problems of cancer patients in mulago. These citizens have paid their taxes and they deserve a fair share of our collective wealth in this need. Thank you.

"In tribute to the United Kingdom and the Republic of Uganda, two bastions of strength in a world filled with strife, discrimination and terrorism."

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