Africa-Press – Uganda. After failing to organise council elections as instructed by the Constitution in Article 181, and for the third time in a row, the government must be encouraged to consider reviewing this level of local government.
The Electoral Commission had again given enough notice, telling Parliament in April that Shs60 billion needed to organise the polls had not been released by the ministry of Finance. And so at the stroke of midnight on June 14, the terms of all local councils 1 and 2 were allowed to quietly fizzle out.
In 2001 and 2018, the ministry had peddled the same loose excuse that it did not have money to run similar elections, leading to some paralysis at the grassroots. The ensuing vacuum created serious political and legal problems because the signature of LC 1 and 2 chairpersons is required on such sensitive documents as land sale agreements, national ID and passport application forms etc.
Despite this history, the ministry refuses to recognise that election of local government councils is a statutory matter and must be financed by the national Treasury. There is no point in crowing about the very high cost of public administration. As long as the Constitution provides for elective offices, the government has a duty to organise polls.
Which brings us to the point where we can all finally agree that Uganda’s public sector is bloated. There are simply too many public offices to be filled and managed at taxpayers’ expense. Not even the Shs7.5 trillion allocated to governance and security in the 2023/24 budget, which was read yesterday, will sufficiently cover this area.
In a country where emphasis is being placed on more investment in the productive sectors of the economy, as opposed to consumptive spending on self-serving politics, one can appreciate the view from finance. There is now fertile ground for a re-imagination of the very structure upon which our democracy is founded. We could start by asking if we can trim the number of local councils, and still be able to effectively supervise public service delivery and monitor government programmes.
In the past, parish and sub-county chiefs were the established local government. And they were doing a relatively good job of it. It was ill-advised to hand over some of their civic roles to councils in the hope of entrenching citizen participation in government. Today, the local councils are hopelessly corrupt and generally serve the narrow partisan interests of the ruling party.
The finance ministry’s disdainful attitude towards these appendages of the ruling elite may be right after all. It does not look like good economics to keep throwing away good money supporting offices where there is a clear and costly duplication of function.
Source: Monitor
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