A plot by President Yoweri Museveni to appease MPs with a Shs50bn Covid19 package at Constituency level following their anger over his criticism of the manner in which they awarded themselves Shs20m each to fight Coronavirus has hit a snag.
On April 28, Museveni told the nation that it was morally reprehensible for MPs to allocate themselves a total of Shs10bn as money to engage in Covid19 activities when Ugandans were suffering. He even said he had told Speaker of Parliament Rebecca Kadaga the controversial allocation was a trap.
An angry Kadaga shot back at Museveni, accusing him of interfering with the independence of Parliament. She even threatened to expose the theft of billions of government funds, starting with how the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM) spent billions to procure expired milk and rotten beans.
But working behind the scenes, Museveni summoned Chairpersons of Parliamentary Committees and a few members of the National Resistance Movement (NRM) Parliamentary Caucus to sell them the idea of starting Covid19 Constituency Taskforces which they would head.
After a meeting with a select committee of members of NRM Parliamentary caucus at State House Entebbe on May 05, Museveni said: “We agreed to form a constituency Covid19 taskforce across the country for MPs to channel their support to their constituents. This is to avert pressure from individual leaders.”
Reports say the president suggested that Shs50bn be allocated for the taskforces. He then tasked Government Chief Whip and Kiboga Woman MP Ruth Nankabirwa to follow up the matter with the committee chairpersons and report back to him.
But when she met the chairpersons on Friday, Nankabirwa was told to tell Museveni that the idea was not welcome.
“They advised me that this constituency taskforce should not even be talked about. If there were plans to create it, it should not be talked about much as it would respond to the pressures,” said Nankabirwa after the meeting.
The chairpersons of committees instead said the President should make the Constituency Development Fund functional to help MPs deal with pressure from their constituents who keep asking for help such as for school fees, funeral expenses and fundraisers.
“The issue of the Constituency Development Fund has been ongoing. A report was laid on table long time ago even before Covid. Members of Parliament went outside of this country to benchmark, so the report is there,” noted Nankabirwa.
Debate on the Constituency Development Fund is now expected to take centre stage to resolve the matter. Introduced in 2005 and halted in 2011 after MPs failed to account for the Shs10m they were receiving every year, the Constituency Development Fund had been instituted to help MPs make contributions to help their constituents.
Sources close to the chairpersons who attended the meeting with Nankabirwa have said that the NRM leaders argued that the current scandal over Shs10bn allocation would be made worse and there would be more attacks from the public if Ugandans heard that MPs had been given Shs50bn since they were already angry and looking at lawmakers as selfish and greedy because of the Shs20m each was given to fight Covid.
To avoid such and let the current storm calm down, the committee chairpersons told Nankabirwa it was wiser not to buy the president’s idea because it could be another trap that could once again put the institution of Parliament in bad light. While Nankabirwa revealed that she will keep consulting NRM MPs on the matter, President Museveni is expected to meet the Parliamentary Caucus and the Chairpersons once again to discuss both the Constituency Development Fund and the Covid Constituency Taskforce which are central in his plan to reconcile with Kadaga and Parliament.
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