Alan Tacca
The fact that Uganda is now a vampire state is no longer seriously disputed. What is worth exploring is the nature of plunder, and the tools powerful people deploy to seize the opportunities availed by the National Resistance Movement (NRM) rule; which means both the legally permissible and the patently criminal opportunities for blood-sucking.
What is criminal is sometimes amazingly creative. And what is legally allowed is sometimes amazingly immoral; or, at least, grossly insensitive.
In context, we have reached a pass where the country is staggering under the weight of its foreign and domestic debt, with the government barely able to meet its payroll and other absolutely unavoidable obligations.
After all the mandatory thefts, waste, twisted priorities and debt servicing have dug their holes in the national Treasury, and a combination of donor scepticism and sanctions have added their toll, Parliament strides over its already damaged reputation and talks of turning into something of a nomadic theatre.
There is this bug lodged in the NRM brain; the belief that shortening the physical distance between officials and any community automatically results in the delivery of more/better service to the community.
Because of this bug, NRM rule has brought upon us a proliferation of petty jurisdictions and petty elected and unelected officials; from tens of thousands of Local Council (LC) officials to a herd of ministers whose full list no sensible person bothers to remember.
All these officials are in the name of “bringing services closer to the people”. But because they have little positive effect to show for their number, they are generally perceived as parasites.
Thanks to the bug, Parliament’s great thinkers have dreamt up this nomadic idea; all the 557 MPs travelling (okugomoka) and camping/debating for a few days in Gulu, Mbale, Mbarara, Masaka, or wherever the Speaker fancies taking the horde to bring legislative “service closer to the people”.
By pure coincidence (unless the Joel Ssenyonyi-led Opposition to the plan has been dabbling in witchcraft), the heated debate on a roaming Parliament has been doing the rounds when the Kiteezi garbage dump tragedy happened.
The dump is only 14 kilometres away from Parliament’s permanent home in Kampala, Uganda’s Capital City.
The city is principally run by two ministers, an executive director and several commissioners, all appointed by President Museveni, who famously boasted that this arrangement had emasculated the elected Lord Mayor and reduced the Opposition politician to a contemptible ceremonial figure.
However, with its permanent home only a few kilometres from the garbage mountain, why did a ruling NRM-controlled Parliament fail to help, nudge or push the city authorities to avert the Kiteezi tragedy? Was 14 kilometres too far away?
The cost: common sense tells us that transporting, tenting, seating, feeding, accommodating and securing 557 MPs and variously facilitating (possibly) thousands of support staff for days in a distant virgin environment must cost more than the standard routine at base.
Therefore, taxpayers should be expected to pay more than the normal budgeted provision.
However, if, as some House members claim, no extra cash will be required, we should conclude that the budget provides a lot of redundant money for Parliament in normal times, which may explain why the House is often seen to be obscenely extravagant when most of the services for the ordinary people are criminally underfunded.
The much-touted economic boom expected in the host towns may be undermined by the security menace and inconvenience visited upon the local people.
And the country generally may report a net loss, in retrospect making our MPs look like myopic parasites.
Alan Tacca is a novelist, socio-political commentator. [email protected]
