Members of Parliament during the plenary session chaired by the Speaker, Ms Anita Among, at Parliament on May 16, 2024. PHOTO/DAVID LUBOWA
Parliament, which has hastily been reconvened from an abrupt one-month recess proclaimed a fortnight ago, will tomorrow reconsider the Appropriation Bill after President Museveni withheld his signature and returned it.
Looked at cursorily, it’s a procedural matter since the law allows it and this is not the first – and unlikely the last - time that the country’s chief political executive asks the Parliament to redo its legislative work.
However, insights offered on-the-record and in background briefings by notable citizens – in and outside government – point to something else: a bubbling to the surface of longstanding power contest between the Executive and Legislature over the Budget.
At the heart of the tango is not which amount is allocated where, but who is positioned to make a final call on all issues money.
“Real power lies in budgeting – money. The question is who takes that power; the Executive or Parliament,” said former minister and lawmaker Isaac Musumba, who introduced a Private Member’s Bill enacted in 2000 as the Budget Act.
The law, which specifically regulated the roles and conduct of the Executive and Parliament in the budgeting process, has since been repealed although some of its key provisions have been incorporated in the successor and broader Public Finance Management Act, 2015.
That repeal, Mr Musumba argued last evening, was “100 percent a mistake”.
While asking Parliament to enact another Budget Act afresh in the face of the standoff between the two branches of government, he said: “The very mischief we sought to cure is the very mischief that has now happened.”
It is the “mismatch of interest”, rather than confusion in legal mandates, behind the fight, one source said.
For instance, Article 155(1) of the Constitution and Section 13(1) of the Public Finance Management Act oblige the President to cause to be prepared and laid before Parliament the government’s proposed annual Budget.
Members of Parliament then scrutinise the proposals and appropriate, which is defined as authorisation for the government to spend money from the Consolidated Fund, or Petroleum Fund, to meet expenditure needs in a financial year.
This arrangement appeared to function. Then like a thunderbolt in dry skies, President Museveni accused the 10th Parliament of irregularly altering the Budget, arguing that it is his as the chief Finance minister and legislators have powers to make recommendations but not alter allocations.
The bomb had been dropped and the tremors shook the nation when during his State of the Nation Address on June 6, the President openly accused lawmakers of colluding with Finance bureaucrats and accounting officers of taking bribes in exchange for budgetary allocations to ministries, departments and agencies.
Proof, Mr Museveni said, he had. Before long, police arrested three MPs – Cissy Namujju, Yusuf Mutembuli and Paul Akamba – who remain incarcerated at Luzira Prison on budget-related corruption charges.
Some lawmakers argue that the Executive is exploiting public anger over graft claims for which the United States and United Kingdom have sanctioned Speaker Parliament Anita Among, to stage a fight and cast the House in bad light.
There are unproven allegations that the Executive ‘overbudgets’, in this case by revising the budget at the last minute by Shs14 trillion to Shs72 trillion, to increase the amount available for it to spend within the permissible 3 percent threshold and report retrospectively for a parliamentary nod.
For Shs72 trillion, it means Shs2.2 trillion.
One senior official said on condition of anonymity that the tango is much less between Parliament and the President, but the Finance ministry is upset over MPs’ reallocations of several billions of shillings from Treasury services to other priorities.
Treasury services are obligatory state commitments such as salaries, loan and interest repayment and subscriptions to regional and international organisations.
Legislators, however, while examining the 2024/2025 budget discovered that Shs578 billion for Mathias Magoola’s Dei Bio Pharma Ltd private business was hatted under Treasury.
This, according to knowledgeable sources, raised House suspicion that Finance was using Treasury services to fund otherwise ineligible expenses and it’s fighting back using the Executive after being caught flat-footed --- a claim ministry Spokesman Jim Mugunga dismissed.
“To assume that the Finance ministry is stage-managing the return [of the Appropriations Bill] is to be ignorant of the powers of the President regarding the budget,” he said, citing assent powers granted by law to the head of state before spending from the Consolidated Fund.
To former minister and MP Tim Lwanga, who previously chaired Parliament’s Budget Committee and is presently the deputy chair of the Presidential Advisory Committee on Budget, the current differences demonstrate inadequate appreciation by the Legislature and Executive of each other’s role in budgeting. “The power of Parliament is appropriation, but they (MPs) don’t appropriate according to what they want without regard to the Executive, which makes the [initial budget] proposals based on its priorities and according to a manifesto it must implement,” he said.
The political accountability and expected electoral dividends have, according to insiders, fuelled spending decisions by either side in ways that MPs are being asked how they will exercise oversight if they participate in allocations.
Two MPs interviewed for this article said they did not divert money as alleged, but moved allocations within programmes to provision for tractors and ambulances per constituency and a seed or government-aided secondary school for sub-counties that have none.
“These are all within government priorities and MPs don’t own constituencies where these services are being directed. In addition, the recipients of the services are also tax-paying Ugandans,” one lawmaker subscribing to the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) party said, asking not to be named in order not to offend President Museveni, the party national chairman.
Another added: “If a constituency is without these things the President has publicly promised, voters may think their MP didn’t lobby enough and vote him out. So, it is true some of my colleagues did this [reallocations] for election benefit.”
Mr Lwanga asked parliamentarians to execute their role with care, knowing they have the power to reduce but not increase the budget.
He questioned why the House did not reject the last-minute corrigendum that the Executive introduced on the eve of passing the Budget, which increased the revenue and expenditure estimates for the new financial year, which starts today, by Shs14 trillion.
“This issue should have gone through the Budget Committee and not be introduced on the floor of House. MPs must have interrogated where the money [for the Shs14 trillion] is coming from. The Parliament I was in would have sent it [the corrigendum] back,” he said.
According to Mr Lwanga, an accountant, “budgeting isn’t a joke; it’s a professional thing. You don’t just tick, tick, and tick. Things have to balance.”
The law
The balancing of the budget, according to the law, must align with the Budget Framework Paper, the Charter on Fiscal Responsibility and the National Development Plan.
The President’s specific reasons for returning the Appropriation Bill --- with a demand MPs reinstate Shs750 billion they reallocated back to government priority proposals --- are to be disclosed during tomorrow’s House sitting.
Insiders allayed fears that a standoff could end in no cash to run the government – similar to government shutdowns in the United States – because the amount for discussion in the returned Appropriation Bill is Shs30 trillion non-statutory allocation out of the Shs72 trillion Budget.
In addition, the law allows the President by warrant to authorise spending out of the Consolidated Fund – for up to four months - whenever the budget is not ready at the start of a financial year.
