Among to whip tougher on indiscipline as Parliament returns next week

Legislators could be staring at a tougher terrain of the final half of the 11th Parliament after the top guns at the House promised to crack a whip on defaulters, absentees and other cases of unbecoming conduct amongst lawmakers and staff.
In her cautioning shots fired in the opening two sittings of the 3rd year of the 11th Parliament convened at the Kololo Independence Grounds this month, Speaker Anita Among indicated that her administration would without fail ensure that legislators and support staff at Parliament deliver on their mandates without fail.
In a strict caution issued just under 10 minutes after President Museveni delivered his State of the Nation Address (SONA), Ms Among promised that her administration would reactivate and intensify the monitoring and reporting of attendance of the House sittings by both MPs and the ministers.
“This will help us in doing our accountability to the electorates on how effectively we have represented them both in the House and the committees,” she reasoned adding that legislators “should be accountable to” the electorate.
She is particularly concerned that a growing section of MPs appear to fall short of what is expected of them and hence need to plough sanity in the legislative arm because “the money that is paid to us Members of Parliament is taxpayers' money and we must be able to account for it to avoid becoming corrupt.”
Similar concerns are pronounced on the Parliament’s opposition wing as well. While closing the two-day opposition consultative workshop on constitutional and electoral reforms at Munyonyo about three weeks ago, the Leader of Opposition (LOP) in Parliament, Mr Mathias Mpuuga told colleagues that “some of us are too busy in our other spaces for which the people never sent us to do.”
“Members of Parliament miss committees, come late to the committees where resolutions have been taken, miss plenary for no reason, are full of excuses, are cheating their voters,” he added and demanded that all MPs under his wing reverse their ways on the same or else “leave the stage.”
Falling short of the expected
A bigger section of the second session has witnessed Speaker Among speak tough on her members with the biggest concerns revolving around pockets of indiscipline and persistent absenteeism by both Cabinet members and lawmakers.
Major among them was on May 4, 2023 while House processed the Finance committee’s reports on a string of the Tax Bills. Ms Among was displeased to learn that Finance Committee leadership had skipped some structured procedures and ‘sneaked in’ a provision into the Excise Duty Amendment Bill, 2023, risking having the House deliberating a ‘wrong’ clause.
After Finance Committee Vice Chairperson, Ms Pacutho Avur, in a suggestion read that tax levy of 0.5 per cent be imposed on bank transactions such withdraws of cash, Ms Among immediately arrested the matter before instituting an inquiry into the source of the demeaning incident.
Prior to this, she had repetitively issued a string of warnings to cabinet and MPs of escalating rates of absenteeism, and also summoned definitive action is taken by the Government Chief Whip Mr Hamson Dennis Obua to whip his team to order.
In a repetitive promises, Mr Obua pledged before the House that his office would, among other measures, a schedule detailing attendance routines of members under his watch. Cases of absenteeism were still registered by a bigger margin on his wing.
A section of the sessions presided over by Deputy Speaker Mr Thomas Tayebwa have also witnessed him decry of some of ‘unexpected’ conduct from a section of MPs.
A major one came off in April when Mr Tayebwa and the House were treated to a deplorable scene where members of the Defense and Internal Affairs committee appeared to be seconding either the Muehlbauer High Technology or the Veridos Identity Solutions to be awarded the National Identity Cards deal for the upcoming mass enrollment registration exercise.
Reason for shielding MPs against corruption
Delicate duties bestowed on legislators largely inform the basis premised upon by Ms Among’s leadership in shielding her members from vulnerabilities of corruption, thereby requiring them to be remain steadfast so as to deliver on their demands.
Such immunity from corruption and sobriety was, for instance, required at the tail-end or the processing of the final budget report, a stage that was largely obstructed by what Speaker Among termed as mercenaries. In May, she decried that a section of undisclosed MPs and Ministers where interfering with the Budget Committee’s work as they sought influence how the final appropriations were to be, to particularly swing in the favour of the mercenaries.
It is with the same spirit that the final plenary sitting of the second year saved government from undertaking a bad loan from a Nairobi-based ‘money-lender’. 
In both major and minority from the House’s committee on National Economy, MPs threw out the government plan to borrow at a whooping Shs2 trillion from an allegedly experienced ‘loan shark’ company headquartered in Kenya. The company under fire is Sovereign Infrastructure Group (SOVINFRAI) and Amarog Capital Limited (ACL).
The House is expected to shift into higher gear starting on Tuesday. It is, however, important to note that the 11th Parliament has had most of the activities or proceedings particularly in the last two opening of the five years conducted under an evolving process.
For instance, opening year was largely characterised by limited number of MPs attending plenary sessions due to strict observance of Covid-19 social distance instituted as a containment measure. Other MPs were, however, accommodated on zoom both for committee sessions and plenary proceedings. Gradually MPs moved to holding plenary sessions under inside chambers and later the mandatory face masks required was relaxed.