Should Parliament Life Continue After General Elections?

Ofwono Opondo and Wafula Oguttu

2 April 2011

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OFWONO OPONDO – NRM

OVER 120 MPs lost in the recent parliamentary elections, meaning that unless President Yoweri Museveni appoints some of them ministers, they will certainly not be in the next House of 375 MPs. Similarly, 23 ministers also lost the elections, many of them during the NRM primaries.

Among the big names that fell are Beatrice Wabudeya (presidency), Dorothy Hyuha (without portfolio), Hope Mwesigye (agriculture), Aggrey Awori (ICT), Gabriel Opio (gender), Omara Atubo (lands) and Namirembe Bitamazire (education). As such, some people are arguing that this massive loss means that this group no longer has the political mandate and legitimacy to conduct legislative business for Uganda.

It is quite a persuasive, although wrong argument out of either ignorance of the Constitution or motivated by political ill will against the losers.

It is a superfluous view because MPs are elected for a known and definite duration and voters know elections shall be held and an MP can lose. It is necessary to state that prior to the 1995 Constitution, a Ugandan president, right from the days of Sir Edward Mutesa, had power to dissolve Parliament at a time of their own choosing, which had been abused.

Parliamentary losers voted out during elections remain bonafide MPs and should be left free to conduct business for the good order and stability of Uganda.

An MP’s seat, mandate and legitimacy do not lapse merely because one has lost the preceding election. Indeed the oath they swear enjoins each MP to exercise due diligence until his/her five-year contract expires, and so there is no reason to suspect their judgment.

However, as directed by the Speaker, Edward Ssekandi, 77 MPs affected by the Constitutional Court ruling against William Okecho, MP West Budama North, are the only ones not permitted to be in Parliament.

There is a provision in the parliamentary law which states that the decisions of Parliament “shall not” be invalidated by the mere absence of a member or a group of them, as along there was the requisite quorum at the time of passing such a decision.

So the Constituent Assembly (CA) removed that power from the President to make Parliament run its course uninterrupted. In fact, it was an innovation from the US making Uganda the only African country where there is a Parliament all the time.

By this the framers of the Constitution also sought to plug a possible legislative vacuum in the absence of a Parliament which a populist or dictatorial president could use to enact draconian laws and decrees. And as such all organs of state – the Executive, the Legislature and Judiciary – remain in full force at all times, and the President can never purport to take any action exploiting a vacuum.

This arrangement is meant to protect citizens and the public at large against any high-handedness as Milton Obote and Idi Amin had done in the past to subvert democratic procedures.

Obote used this method to delay or suspend sittings of Parliament and unilaterally enacted the 1966 and 1967 constitutions. Obote again used this method to delay and latter ban multiparty politics in 1969, and subsequently avoided holding parliamentary elections whenever they were due.

The NRM hopes no one wishes to return to those Obote and Amin days when there was no Parliament and the President acted alone, most of the time against the people.

WAFULA OGUTTU – FDC

I will not claim to know of the best practices elsewhere in parliamentary transitions. But I believe that the practice in Uganda must be reviewed and improved upon. Our 1995 Constitution (or is it of 2005?) was largely informed by Uganda’s bad history.

It was quite understandable that the framers of that 1995 Constitution before it was watered down in 2005 to lift term limits, had tried to cure lot of mischief in our national politics.

Wary of what dictators do, the Constituent Assembly, removed the power of dissolving Parliament at will from the President. This is how the lethal Six Parliament survived the wrath of the President who still suffers from the nightmares it gave him.

To deal with the issue of an independent and strong Parliament which he saw as a challenge to his rule, the President then hatched and devised a method of using state funds to bribe MPs so that they do what he wants. His first big achievement was in 2005 when he paid each MP the equivalent of sh5m as an inducement for them to lift the presidential term limits from the Constitution and allow him to seek a third term.

Just before the recently concluded general elections, the President was at it again. He dished out the equivalent of sh20m to each MP without even prior information to some of them well knowing that they very much needed the money for their campaigns.

This was after they had just passed for him a whole sh7.2b as a supplementary budget for his campaigns hidden in certain bureaucratic language. The sh20m was particularly used to appease the NRM independent MP candidates. They had missed out on the sh7.2b.

It will not be far-fetched to say that some NRM MPs, especially those who know that they are not coming back to the Ninth Parliament, have been once again compromised, this time round to exonerate ministers who were responsible for the loss of over sh500b of the infamous CHOGM funds.

They want Ugandans to believe that no CHOGM money was stolen because all expenditures were approved by a cabinet committee! It is treachery and treason. Aren’t these the same MPs who were dodging debates and denying the House a quorum yet they continue to draw free allowances?

In a situation like ours where we have leaders who do not want to leave power, where those leaders will grab any opportunity to compromise MPs to do whatever they want done and where some MPs behave like mercenaries, it is better that the Constitution and electoral law are changed so that Parliament is automatically dissolved by law at least 30 days before nomination day. Same thing should happen to district and local councils.

Of course another tragedy we have in the House is the rented huge majority of the Government side. The way they behave makes a total mockery of democracy. As long as they think a matter is against their party, government or individual member’s interests, they will not see national or any other interest. They will vote for a wrong candidate.

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