Africa-Press – Uganda. The truth must be told, you can’t offer what you don’t have.
We have no democracy to talk of in this country. Maybe, we at one time aspired to be a democratic country, but unfortunately we derailed on that and we are harvesting what we have been sowing for years.
It becomes a real mockery for NRM, the ruling and majority party in Parliament to demand decorum, sobriety, patriotism and nationalism from such a small group of opposition MPs, most of whom spent all their adult life under and confessing NRM principles until recently.
I tend to agree with Ambassador James Kinobe who recently while appearing on NBS Barometer show said that there are no political parties in Uganda. He said that what we have on either sides of government or opposition are political brokers. Nothing could be more true than this.
Should we want reforms in our political dispensation, the starting point should be within our parties. Whatever happens in Parliament is a clear manifestation of what our parties are. If you foster intolerance and can’t stand internal democracy within your own party, how do you expect that there will be decorum and nationalism when your MPs go to Parliament?
Yes, there might be posturing, but the truth is, we have all lost direction and trust in our governance. We need to be honest and look ourselves in the mirror. We should stop the posturing or shifting blame. The opposition in Parliament is less than 100 in number. NRM has more than 430 MPs. How can we possibly fail to steer this Parliament in such a manner that brings decorum to our aspired democratic dispensation?
NRM has been in charge of the Parliament leadership since 1996 when we had the Movement system and in 2006 when we declared that we are embracing multi party democracy. NRM controls all the significant leadership positions in Parliament. The NRM party has enjoyed the overwhelming majority in the House. If there are changes that need to be made in all our electoral laws in order to allow voters to bring in only the mature, qualified, patriotic, experienced legislators that will further our desired democracy, then why don’t we do just that? Why do we continue in the path of political gerrymandering which has only resulted in what we currently experience in our Parliament on a daily basis!
When will the posturing and the blame game end? You get exactly what you hatch. If you have hatched intolerance, selfishness, uncompromising attitudes and violence as a way of sorting out any contestation that is exactly what we shall continue to reap unfortunately. Calling names or referring to others in deragotory manners is not helpful because the same reference will be equally used against us and that will for sure stalk intolerance.
We as the mighty mass party which has the State Power and has the majority in Parliament, must be the first to show maturity, patriotism, tolerance, nationalism, decorum and a desire to settle our differences through meaningful dialogue.
We deliberately diluted the value of Parliament by lowering the bar standard of entry.
Then what hurts is that even knowing that there is an industrial scale forgery of academic papers going on, we deliberately don’t address the enormous proliferation of counterfeit business thriving downtown on Nasser and Nkurumah Road. It is rumoured that most of those in high offices own a printery whose main job is counterfeit.
We encouraged those with the equivalent to become the majority in our Parliament. This is a policy made out of sheer populism.
We can’t root out mediocrerism, villagerism and madness in our Parliament as long as we continue to embrace the populism low bar standard entry requirement for an MP. We can’t also root out the chaotic characters and substandard performance that we currently see exhibited in Parliament if we continue to let thrive the counterfeit enhancing business of mushrooming printeries which have effectively replaced the genuine Academic Certificate offering institutions.
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