One of my teachers, Prof. Bernard Couty, had a strange way of defining and explaining concepts in a bid to make us understand them. His approach was to define a concept in terms of what it is not, rather than what it is. It is this same strange method that I will use here to define the role of a Member of Parliament. An MP’s job is NOT
- To build schools
- To build roads
- To build bridges
- To distribute NAADS goats
- To take young men to Iraq
- To build churches or mosques
- To pay school fees
- To finance SACCOs
- To support women groups
- To become minister, or any of the milliard empty promises that MPs make to citizens while seeking votes.
In concert with the age-old democratic principle of separation of powers, the legislature is a branch of government, whose role is legislation, supervision of the executive and representation. It is this latter role that has taken a prominent role in Uganda.
This explains the strange ‘roles’ of MPs as negated above, using the Couty tool of elimination. Ugandans have been taken for a ride by whoever is seeking to ascend to power or to retain power through this narrow definition of the role of the legislature. The very reason people’s closeness to ‘power’ (perceived or real) becomes a key factor as they dupe citizens, who have been reduced to mere ‘voters’.
It follows then that for parliament to play its true legislative role; it must be well equipped, facilitated like any other arm of government. The question therefore should not be whether the MPs need the vehicles, allowances, chapatis, mandaazi, pan cakes, iPADs, or not.
The strange thing about MPs is the prominence of their wrong roles, which explains (but should not excuse) their big numbers, big salaries and the astronomical expenditure on the whole house.
The abnormal size of the legislature is under this false premise of ‘representing’ the people. But shall we have many presidents as well, under the guise of ‘enfranchising’ the people?
The logical thing is, for whoever is agitating, to start at the root of the problem: we must reconsider the size of our parliament. As we have argued earlier, while it may not be easy to adopt the party proportionate representation which abolishes the constituency system (South African style), we can adopt a simple formula for representation that reduces the numbers: every two neighbouring districts to be represented by one MP, thus 56 MPs going by our current number of districts, diving the number between male and female.
Any MP appointed to cabinet should leave the house. No special interests groups. In a fully functioning economy, all interests will get catered for by the normal process of goods and services being available to all. My mother sells her matooke from the comfort of her kitchen throne thanks to a good road from Kampala to her village, and this has nothing to do with her ‘woman MP’ in the house.
This number is manageable for government to buy official vehicles for each MP, maintained and serviced as any other government vehicle, boarded off when it reaches the due mileage.
A 4x4 double cabin pick-up is ideal for this. This will save us the Ugx 500 billion that we will have spent on MPs by the end of this term. The reduced numbers will enable further facilities that are essential to create an effective legislator: access to a modern resource centre with a well facilitated research team in key sectors. The embarrassing case of MPs puzzled by the ownership of Umeme points to a bigger lacuna than we can imagine.
This is the simple formula to this problem. Else, we shall lament and all will come to naught.
The author is partner at Peers Consult Ltd, Kampala.
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