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NRM’s promises: A midterm look at the ruling party’s manifesto
Mr Norbert Mao, the Democratic Party president general, campaigns during the 2011 general elections. Next to him is his wife Naomi. Photo by Joseph Kiggundu
What you need to know:
Democratic Party president general says the opposition’s fragmentation in the past has played into the hands of President Museveni.
KAMPALA-We are into the last half of this presidential and parliamentary term. From the corridors of Parliament, members have started sitting at the drawing board to plan how they can make it back.
In and outside Parliament, the Opposition is running around trying to find its compass– often times behaving like a gaggle of geese.
The NRM is, expectedly, giving them a hard time– It wants to retain the national cake come 2016, this time with a monumental percentage.
However, as the ruling party prepares to vie for another five years, how has it performed so far, based on what it promised its voters in the last campaigns?
A citizens’ midterm audit launched by the Uganda National NGO forum in October argues that so far, the NRM government has taken initiatives aimed at fulfilling the promises it made to the citizens.
In the last two pieces about the last NRM manifesto, we noted that the journey to total implementation has been one riddled with back tracking, and unkept promises.
Keeping true to promises
However, in this last part of the NRM manifesto sequel, focusing on the performance of the 2011 manifesto, the Uganda National NGO forum audit shows a noticeable shift from unkept promises to actually an attempt to keep true to the promises– although it still falls flat on job creation and fighting corruption.
The report is a juxtaposition of the demands in the Citizens Manifesto launched just before the 2011 campaigns on the one hand, what the NRM party promised and what it has so far done, two and half years down the road.
The Citizen’s Manifesto was drafted after consultative meetings were held across the country structured around a regional and interest group logic. It was about getting the ordinary person to set the agenda for political leaders; about holding elected leaders accountable using the citizens’ agenda as benchmarks.
The report notes that whereas there has been success in improving access to social services, for example in the health sector with the rehabilitation and construction of health centres and hospitals, it is still noticeable that the quality of health care, education and water remains a challenge and of lower value– putting lives of Ugandans at risk.
The Uganda NGO Forum was behind the Citizen’s Manifesto, an aggregation of citizens demands put forward in a manner that political leaders and government can respond to.
The 2011 NRM election manifesto puts emphasis on betterment and effectiveness in service delivery, creation of jobs and consolidation of rule of law, investment in commercialisation of agriculture, investment in the development of the oil and gas sector, and improvement of infrastructure and human resource development for prosperity for all Ugandans.
In an earlier interview on the performance of the party’s manifestos, Information minister Rosemary Namayanja said the NRM’s focus is issue-based politics.
“We want to move from politics of sentiments to politics of issues. Now if you (as a party) do not have a manifesto what issues would you be talking about? Manifestos emphasise issue-based politics, which is a good thing for democracy,” she said.
She talked of the party’s achievements across the board and slammed claims that the party’s universal primary and secondary education project is producing functional illierates.
Her reasons:
“If you put Shs3 billion in a project, you expect that the quality will improve but quality is not achieved overnight.
“We are focusing on sciences and we have at least equipped laboratories in government schools around the country and the quality will be perfect in the long run,” she said, adding that the public university quota system introduced in 2006 now means that at least nine students from each rural district are assured of university education.
The 2011 elections presented yet another opportunity for Ugandans to listen to promises and commitments from political aspirants in form of Manifestos. However, at the same time citizens presented their own Manifesto with 10 key development priorities that they felt needed urgent attention by the next government.
The citizens were concerned about the widespread corruption while demanding real action against it; widespread poverty; declining fortunes of the agriculture sector; environmental degradation and the challenges of climate change; poor infrastructure especially roads and energy; growing unemployment especially amongst the youth; countrywide breakdown in the health service delivery system; poor quality education and mismatch with Uganda’s development needs.
THE PERFORMANCE
Unemployment is highlighted in both the Citizen and NRM manifesto as one of the major challenges facing the country, with an estimated over two million literate youth being jobless and a further over two million under-employed.
In its manifesto, the NRM outlines job creation interventions including creation of industrial parks, establishment of sugarcane plantations, oil and gas industry development, and youth skills training.
However, the audit notes that although government set up the youth capital venture fund to a tune of shs20 billion with a target of supporting over 5,200 small business, the greatest concerns over this fund has been the fear that some youths who access these loans may be arrested for failure to pay.
Even more discouraging, the audit notes, commercial banks have over time generated their own list of requirements including collateral, reduced grace period and minimum O’ level education requirement for one to be considered for loan under the youth scheme.
HEALTH
Ms Everlyn Bukirwa, the coordinator of Kiboga District NGO Forum acknowledges the fact that the government has built health facilities at local and regional levels.
But despite this fact, she says, mothers continue to die in these hospitals because of the lack of basic facilities and necessary equipment and that the women have resorted to Traditional Birth Attendants who have also claimed many lives.
“Mothers continue to trot long distances in search of safe water for their domestic use and even when they find some water, it is shared with animals and thus not safe for human consumption, she therefore called upon government to provide safe water,” she says.
In their manifesto, citizens demanded for the redesign of the health system reinvestments towards prevention rather than curative focus. They also demanded for massive investments in refurbishing the dilapidated health infrastructure and increasing the health sector budget to 40 per cent.
In its manifesto, NRM promised to recruit more health workers to fill all the approved posts within the health sector, and progressively improve the remuneration of the health workers and providing them housing accommodation.
In an earlier telephone interview, Mr Ruhakana Ruganda, the ministry of health, said the NRM has done well in the health sector to ensure that all Ugandans get good health services.
“To achieve this the movement has focused and encouraged prevention of diseases, promotion of health and where we cannot prevent, treatment of disease,” he said.
“We have expanded health facilities in especially hospitals, health centres at different levels. We have encouraged the private sector to invest in health facilities in terms of hospitals and they have taken advantage of the good environment in the country thank to the NRM leadership.”
The NGO forum audit noted that so far, 11,211 health staffs have been recruited. Nationally, health sector staffing strength is at 56 per cent of the approved positions, four percentage points below the target and medical officers’ remuneration has been enhanced to Shs2.5 million per month inclusive of consolidated allowances.
AGRICULTURE
Citizen’s also demanded sustainable investment in the agricultural sector to 15 per cent of the national budget. The NRM promised in its manifesto to support 600,000 farmers annually through Naads with advisory services and revolving schemes using village farmers’ development forums.
However, the audit found out that just 34 per cent of the households receive Naads services. Most of the services offered are in form on training and seeds. It was found that the quality of most of the services remained poor. Ms Bukirwa says most women in Uganda have not benefited from the Naads programme and even those who benefit are very few.
CORRUPTION
While addressing an old boys dinner at Starehe Boys Centre last week, Kenya chief Justice Willy Mutunga said it is wrong to allow a country to have corruption as the fourth arm of government – the most powerful and the one that controls all the other arms.
He warned that corruption’s corrosive effect on democratic institutions and a country’s development become even more vicious and pronounced when it intersects with ethnicity.
Before the last elections, Ugandans had called for decisive action against the corrupt, especially at the highest political levels.
Although government has consistently claimed to be at the forefront of fighting corruption right from the implementation of the 2001 and 2006 election manifestos, the NGO Forum audit notes that little has been done to fight the vice.
“There is not much to show for this commitment,” the audit notes. “Instead many new corruption scandals have emerged while government has sometimes been seen as shielding powerful individuals from prosecution.”
At one point, indeed, the President paid the court bill of one senior government official who had been accused of swindling Global Fund for HIV/AIDS and malaria monies.
ENERGY
NRM promised to increase power supply to reach per capita energy consumption of 675kWh through setting up generation capacity to 3885 MW by 2016 and also expanding the transmission grid and transmission voltage to cover 220KV and 440KV and rural electrification measures to be further accelerated based on grid extensions, independent grids and use of solar home systems.
The audit notes that Bujjagali Dam has since been completed and connected to the national grid while construction of Karuma Dam was commissioned.
Energy generation capacity, however, is still low at 683 MW in the face of a per capita energy consumption rate of 75KW per hour. The report also notes challenges in the use of and connection to the national electricity grid.
The audit also found that majority of people in the rural areas are not connected to the national grid and were using kerosene for energy and very few using solar.”
Over all, the audit observes that while government has taken some positive steps in fulfilling its promises, the delay to release of funds to districts for programme implementation is greatly inhibiting progress.
INFRASTRUCTURE
Citizens asked for improved planning for Kampala city’s infrastructure and roads in particular, improving rural infrastructure and network and reviving district roads construction.
NRM promised to upgrade from gravel to tarmac and design for tarmacking new roads annually and budgeted for and completing the rehabilitation of all roads planned.
The audit notes that 518Kms of several national roads have so far fully or been partially completed and a number of bridges have been rehabilitated and constructed. However, corruption in the sector has continued and some of the roads worked on a re shoddy.
Never the less, the report says, a number of roads in Kampala have been tarmacked and beautified.
“Municipalities located mainly along highways have benefited from the constructed highways,” the audit reads. “However, this audit found that in most municipalities, there were no new roads constructed.”
