Parliament: Do not lose focus on your role

Parliament is not taking all the money that is supposed to be sent to different sectors, but it does the allocations.

More than just allocations, Parliament is expected to discuss issues affecting the people the legislators represent and find solutions to their challenges.

The young people are taking their grievances to the House because they want to be heard. Not only to be heard, but they feel the legislators have not articulated the issues that affect them. This is a vote of no confidence in the House.

For example, the issue the country is facing is corruption.

It is an issue every leader must take an interest in addressing or be seen to be concerned about fighting it.

 It is not partisan, it is not tribal, and cuts across all classes and social strata.

Therefore, the debate in or out of Parliament is essential to assure the people that something is being done in the fight.

But when Parliament leadership blocks debate, or suspends plenary like has been done, especially a day after security forces were used to harass, arrest, and intimidate peaceful demonstrators, it paints a bad image of the House.

The youth had planned a peaceful demonstration to present their petition to their representatives in Parliament. The House had an opportunity to side with the people.

For many years, corruption has taken much more money than the investment in human resource development, to the tune of more than Shs10 trillion per year according to reports by the Auditor General.

The poor health services, schools, bad roads, and many others are blamed on corruption, bribery, and embezzlement of public funds for personal use by the officials in charge.

Instead of Parliament coming out to support and receive the voices of the people they would always not have heard from, they seemed to have sided with the repressive arm of the government which responded with a massive show of force, deploying soldiers and police across the streets to prevent the demonstration from taking place.

Parliament should have realised that real democratic progress requires listening to the people, understanding their day to day challenges, and finding solutions. That’s what they were elected for.

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