By Oweyegha-Afunaduula
Many people fight for Parliamentary seats solely because they are unemployed. No agenda in mind whatsoever! What they forget is that getting Parliamentary allowances is not what being an MP is all about. Pushing for new ways of service delivery, pointing out to Parliament that the crucial departments of health and education are very badly underfunded are some of the responsibilities an MP should have in mind.
Look at the way so many of our leaders are flocking to foreign countries because of our dilapidated healthcare facilities are unable to help. Steve Jobs told us, while lying on his deathbed, that whether you are flying in first class or economy class, if the plane goes down you also go down with it.
Ignoring the lot of the downtrodden is poor reasoning. We are in Uganda together, as she goes to the dogs we all going to the dogs with her. As Apollo Milton Obote Used to say: Together We Rise Together we Sink so long as Uganda is our country.
Being an MP, unless you are a nominated one, like the UPDF ones, you are the voice of your voiceless constituents. You should know what the collective silent voice of the poor and needy is and voice it in Parliament. If you don’t, there are schemers in Parliament and in Government who will set a completely different Agenda to serve their selfish interests and make you deviate your attention from what you said you were going to Parliament to do. That is how a National budget of Uganda has ended financing the narrow choices of a narrow group of people at the expense of all citizens.
If MPs don’t know what to do, they will become like slaves to a small group of people, some of whose members will even not be in Government but very powerful. They might indeed focus their minds on the money they never got before the my went to Parliament.
Before they come to their senses, the five years over and they have to go back to the people who no longer want to look at them because they did not serve as he public interest. When they are rejected, that is when they realize they spent time and energy serving only their narrow political, social and economic interests, and that they were just used for higher order interests of a small group of people.
This explains why we have a very high turn over of MPs in the Uganda Parliament: there is a disconnect between the interests of the people and those of the MPs for 5 years before the next election.
Here are some questions that our MPs, past and present, must answer.
1. How could they allow the country to be broken into small meaningless bantustans, less viable than those that existed in Apartheid South Africa?
2. How could they allow Uganda to become the only International Bantustan in the world?
3. How could they allow Uganda to become the international source of modern slaves in the world?
4. How could they allow more crude Apartheid to evolve and manifest in Uganda?
5. How could they allow The National Budget to drift away from education, health and Agriculture and instead capitalize unproductive, consumptive sectors and entities so heavily?
6. How could they allow Uganda to become so unproductive that we cannot stand without Foreign Aid, which is theft of the rich from the poor?
7. How could they allow poverty and ignorance to become resources, as our natural resources are stolen by a few people in power or attached to power?
8. How could they allow Uganda to be known worldwide for human rights abuses, extrajudicial killings, tortures, repression and oppression by an elected government?
9. How could they allow their Legislature to be consumated by the Executive and subordinated to the Executive?
10. How could they allow Uganda to be so uncertain about its future, and millions of Uganda to live uncertain lives?
For God and My Country
The Writer is a Ugandan Environmentalist And Scientist.
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