The poverty of our Parliament

A small group of intrepid Ugandans have cast the spotlight on malfeasance and blatant corruption in the Parliament of the Republic – the ‘People’s House’. Twitter (now called X, a rather bizarre name that I refrain from using) has been the site for what now goes by the label of  ‘Exhibition’. 

We previously had ‘Exhibitions’ of our sick healthcare system, the dilapidated and potholed roads of Kampala (oh well, country-over, really), the police, the NGO sector, etc. The compatriots doing these Twitter campaigns and exposés are patriots. They are at once relentless and forceful. 

In the past though, the campaigns have been hijacked and used to smear and malign; I was a victim of utterly fabricated and false charges during the ‘NGO Exhibition’ sometime last year. 

Social media is powerful tool for the good, one of the most consequential inventions ever, but equally a cesspool and often a weapon for destruction. As I have argued here repeatedly, the world will likely come to end because of the Internet given the nearly unlimited possibilities and absolute freedom that defines online activity. 

But enough of the digression, and back to Parliament, the citadel of the people’s will as it is comprised of representatives of the people. World-over, legislatures can be quite dysfunctional and places of spectacles rather than substance, theatrics ,not thoughtful deliberation.

Ours though is an entirely different story, to be sure, in the broader scheme of things not very different from parliaments in authoritarian settings and pseudo democracies all over Africa and in many other places. 

In the strictest sense, we really do not have a parliament worth any name. What we have, in the main, is a collection of more than 500 odd men and women, many with little, if anything, of substance to thinking about how to best legislate for the country and exact oversight on other branches of government in ways that advance the interests of the broader public. 

Our rulers could just abolish parliament, and we would lose nothing, in fact we likely could do better in addressing many of the endemic socioeconomic problems we face in the absence of a parliament. Given we are tottering under the enormous weight of misrule, it is difficult to see how we would be worse off if we didn’t have a parliament. 

We are not a country of rules and laws, thus the parliamentary job of legislating is of little consequence. And considering that the rulers can do whatever they want without any sanctioning from parliament, the oversight function of the legislature is largely irrelevant. 

Any major vote in the House that remotely threatens the power of the rulers has no chance of passing while a vote to cement the rulers’ hold on power (although I believe they can just rule without the niceties of parliamentary motions) always go through even if it means the military physically assaulting the few recalcitrant MPs.

But Parliament in its decayed and dysfunctional form is nevertheless a critical pillar of our impoverished politics and helps keep an otherwise broken political system standing. Through Parliament, the rulers maintain a façade of democracy albeit with a hefty financial price.  This price, running in the hundreds of billions every year, is one of the crucial ways that the rulers mollify a broad spectrum of elites from across the country who remain invested in keeping the current system in place. 

This applies as much to those who officially belong to the ruling party as to the group that purports to stand in opposition; the two are united in their pursuit of largesse and extracting from the state coffers using the avenue of Parliament. 

The calibre of Members of Parliament has deteriorated in tandem with Mr Museveni’s long hold on the country, and the quality of parliamentary leadership has inevitably dipped. 

To the fierce folks on Twitter lifting the veil and stripping bare ‘exhibits’ through ‘Parliamentary Exhibition’, there is an unfortunately depressing reality: exposing corruption in Uganda over the years has tended to go along with its increase, not decrease, notoriety and blatancy! 

As I argued here recently, curtailing the runaway graft that is so rampant, including shameless nepotism and cronyism, will only be possible after the current regime of rule is no more. 

We may get some cosmetic changes and attain a few victories in the fight against corruption, here and there, but in the main we must concede that corruption is the way the current rulership works, not how it fails, thus defeating it means defeating the entire system of rule. To see otherwise is either disingenuous or illusory.

Moses Khisa, 
[email protected]