Prime
Is it possible to change a rotten political system without getting one’s hands dirty?
Mr Daniel K. Kalinaki
What you need to know:
- Many good men and women are sucked into the machine, chewed up and spat outside, their bodies left unburied as a warning to others.
We argued last week that the ongoing fighting within the higher echelons of the NUP political party – a sideshow from the profligacy at Parliament – reflected internal contradictions that emerge among and amidst those seeking political change. While the objective – getting a seat at the table – might be the same, the incentives often differ based on individual circumstances.
A politician with a reasonable degree of financial independence might be motivated by the need to preserve it, or even loftier ideals of social justice and equity. One caked in blood and dust from a dignity-stripping lifelong struggle with poverty and want is more likely to seek individual benefits first – and be vulnerable to corruption and co-optation.
Those seeking power and change therefore face two simultaneous challenges; how to manage the self-interest of their allies and associates, while navigating a landscape designed to resist reform and the emergence of new elites and power centres.
Parliament offers a good case study. MPs, on average, have only a three-in-10 chance of being re-elected. These chances are boosted by being appointed to Cabinet (doesn’t apply to opposition MPs); being outspoken (which, in a House of more than 500 MPs, depends on which committees you get sat on and how often the Speaker picks you to speak); and your ability to outbid your rivals at the next election.
Under the rules of Parliament, Opposition MPs lead four of the most powerful and important accountability committees: the Public Accounts Committee; the Committee on Commissions, Statutory Authorities and State Enterprises; the Local Government Accounts Committee; and the Committee on Government Assurances.
A lot of the work done by government ministries, departments or agencies goes through these four committees. In theory, therefore, a reform-minded opposition in Parliament can hold the government accountable simply by exposing or resisting rot at this level.
The lived reality, however, is vastly different. By sheer dint of the size of Parliament and the relatively small numbers of those in opposition, most MPs on these committees are from the ruling party. They can water down controversial findings or drop them altogether, leaving the facts to only appear, every so often, through minority reports.
Even where a report has the broad consensus of MPs, it can simply be euthanised by the Speaker without discussion, as happened with a recent report about the national airline. And when it makes it to the floor, it can be publicly executed by ruling party majoritarianism.
Faced with this hopeless situation, opposition MPs face two poor choices. One is to go rogue and expose the rot, anyway, including outside parliamentary channels. By doing so, they invite the full weight of the ‘system’ to undermine them and their re-election prospects. The other is to join the party, so to say, and use these committees for rent-seeking – something some opposition MPs have done with a notorious level of enthusiasm and dexterity.
Once their hands are sufficiently dirty, they now qualify to be embraced by the ‘system’ in the same way a gang initiate is accepted after their first murder. The system will allow them to get away with extortion as long as they allow it to get away with murder; the appropriated surplus will allow them to outbid rivals in re-election contests. Everyone wins, except the taxpayer.
Many reformists who have emerged in Uganda over the years come from a good place. Seeking a country that is fair, functional and rewards effort, they put themselves forward to do their bit. Instead, they find a politic is closed, cynical and captive to very narrow interests. It is Hotel California-meets-Raiders of the Lost Ark; you don’t want to stay but while you can check out, you can never leave!
Many good men and women are sucked into the machine, chewed up and spat outside, their bodies left unburied as a warning to others. Some still venture into the graveyard of reputations that is Ugandan politics but mostly it has been abandoned to those devoid of choice, unmoored from morality and unrestrained by conscience.
This situation is, without a doubt, undesirable and unsustainable. An extractive and rapacious political culture that abstracts from the public well faster than taxpayers can refill it without going naked and hungry will, sooner or later, implode.
Yet indignation and disapproval, however eloquently expressed, are insufficient to trigger the external pressure necessary to impose personal penalties against negative political or financial behaviour.
Change is likely to come in one of two ways. It might come when an overwhelming force outside the current political formations coalesces to sweep away the status quo through a revolutionary event.
Or it might also come through sending enough good women and men into the sewers, accepting that they have to get dirty in order to stay there, and then hoping that their self-interest can align with the wider public interest to force through change from the inside when an explosion is imminent but hopefully not inevitable. If we can’t create a new political order, we must then work through the one we have to get the one we need.
Yes, it stinks, but we do not have the luxury to simply hold our noses.
Whichever option we take, we cannot expect to watch from the sidelines and change a rotten political system without getting our hands dirty.
