By Kevin Patrice
President Yoweri Museveni has opened a new window to work with MPs after they reportedly turned down his earlier 50 million offer for the proposed constituency COVID19 task forces.
He had earlier on accused them of being morally bankrupt by allocating themselves Shs10bn to help in the fight against Covid19 disease.
In a Coronavirus address delivered on April 28 at State House Nakasero in Kampala, Museveni vowed to punish MPs if they did not send the Shs20m each of them received to the district Covid19 taskforces for better planning.
“If the MPs have spent the Shs20m wrongly, they will pay back using their salary. If they have spent the money on themselves, it’s a terrible thing,” said Museveni. “That Shs20m is bad planning because we had already planned in a certain way. It is morally reprehensible for MPs to give themselves money for personal use when the country is in such a crisis; and totally unacceptable to me and to the NRM.”
However, Museveni’s remarks on the matter were greeted with anger from MPs who accused him of using them and wanting to dump them months before an election. Some from the NRM such as Burahya County MP and NRM Parliamentary Caucus Publicity Secretary Margaret Muhanga said “Museveni was ill-advised” because “he over demonized us and I even couldn’t believe it.”
Speaker Rebecca Kadaga went ahead and promised to expose the rot in the expenditure of some of the money included in the Shs304bn supplementary budget for Covid19 activities. She told the media to investigate the money allocated to the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM) claiming that some of it had been used to buy rotten beans and expired milk. The MPs even demanded an apology from the head of state.
It later emerged that as one of the ways to reconcile with the lawmakers after a week of condemnation of his statements on the controversial Covid19 allocation. On May 05, Museveni revealed that he had held a “meeting with a select committee of Members of NRM Parliamentary caucus” at State House Entebbe. Those in attendance included Government Chief Whip Ruth Nankabirwa and Kiboga Woman MP, Budget Committee Chairperson and Ntenjeru North MP Amos Lugolobi, Finance Committee Chairperson and Rubanda East MP Henry Musasizi, Namutumba Woman MP Mariam Naigaga and PWDs representative in Parliament Sofia Nalule.
After the meeting, Museveni said he and the NRM MPs had “agreed to form a constituency Covid19 task force across the country for MPs to channel their support to their constituents. This is to avert pressure from individual leaders.”
The move according to some analysts was anticipated to further complicate Museveni’s relationship with Speaker Kadaga. On May 05, Kadaga told MPs to spend the controversial Shs20m each of them was given according to rules issued by the Parliamentary Commission, and ignore those issued by the President and the Judiciary, or any other person or body.
Apart from making the fight between Parliament and State House worse, other observers have claimed that Museveni could have been planning to make MPs look like institutions before their constituents who would then demand for more than Museveni and Parliament would give them to support constituency interventions during and after the Covid19 crisis.
Institutionalizing the position of a Member of Parliament would require enabling laws that would put in place enough budgets, office space and staff to handle constituency work and leave the people’s representatives to concentrate on their political roles as head of constituencies and other duties required of them as MPs.
Had Museveni managed to create constituency taskforces and convince Parliament to allocate them a supplementary budget, it would be difficult for them to explain to their constituents that they cannot help after Covid19. Some of them would have to use their own savings during and after Covid19 in case the money given to them is not enough or risk losing out on being elected again as MPs in the parliamentary elections that will happen in early 2021
Sensing some dangers, the MPs got out of the deal and asked Government Chief Whip that they were not willing to take the President’s offer since it would further jeopardize those already damaged relationship with those voters.
Some of the MPs have previously complained that they have a lot of responsibilities such as paying school fees for tens (even hundreds in some cases) of children of the vulnerable poor, contributing to wedding and funeral expenses and development fundraising drives. Had they agreed to the formation of constituency taskforces, their constituents would demand more, and this would simply be another trap which was. either intended or accidental.
Having jumped out of the trap set for them by President Museveni in the first place, the unsuspecting MPs have reportedly fallen into another mega trap where they have allegedly pocketed a whopping 40 million each,double what Kadaga had previously given them.
It is reported that before the money was given out to the MPs to strictly take back the 20 million they had received from Kadaga, which observers argue was intended to isolate the mother fighter from her MPs.
Whereas this would further escalate the evidently rocky relations between Parliament and Museveni whom they had attempted to pass a motion of displeasure against, just days before the same house praised and recognized him for the remarkable contribution in the fight against Coronavirus, it’s looking most likely that one MP in particular, will be angered by the move and that’s The woman herself – Rebecca Kadaga and maybe the usual suspects from opposition who might not have partaken of the “fatty meal”
With the position of majority of the Members especially from the ruling NRM shifting in favor of their master provider Museveni, Kadaga’s position in this regard remains questionable. How many of the members of Parliament will remain on the side of the fierce woman who has shaken the executive into near submission to the will of the legislature?