In his latest plan to appease Members of Parliament after he criticised them for illegally awarding themselves Shs20m each to support Covid19 activities, President Yoweri Museveni is reportedly planning to push through a proposal to give the over 400 MPs a Shs50bn budget to run the Coronavirus Constituency Taskforce Activities.
The President has recently been meeting legislators from his ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) in what has been seen as an effort to appease them after some openly accused him of embarrassing Parliament before the general public in a televised Coronavirus address delivered on April 28 at State House Nakasero in Kampala. In leaked Whatsapp conversations from MPs’ social media groups, some NRM legislators had accused Museveni of using them and planning to dump them for new ones since he was aware that majority of them would not make it back to the House as past parliamentary election results have shown.
However, Museveni’s Shs50bn proposal could help most of the MPs get the much needed support to start to strategize for re-election. Apparently, the President wants each Member of Parliament to head the constituency taskforce. This means that MPs will control the budgets at constituency level and will be able to choose who to run the selected activities such as relief food distribution.
Political observers have warned that this move could set the country in early campaign mood, making the intended plan (which is to prevent the further spread of Covid19) fail. These argue that Museveni’s plan might give MPs the leeway to choose their political and campaign agents in the villages and parishes in their constituencies to make it look like the money is coming from the incumbent MPs and is out of their generosity and not national coffers.
The result could be complaints from politicians who have expressed interest in challenging the current legislators. The opponents might also start covertly making donations through their agents by all means, including mobile money transactions. What this means is that the MPs could catch election fever, and might ask Museveni for another supplementary package to pump into their constituencies or even keep some for elections.
As for the President, his plan for reconciliation with Parliament is making progress. For example, after one of the NRM Caucus meetings attended by a few members such as key committee chairpersons, Caucus Publicity Secretary Margaret Muhanga Mugisa (Burahya County MP) said Museveni had been misled and ill advised by his social media team who had told him Ugandans were unhappy with the Covid19 Shs10bn allocation for MPs after using the social media discussion as the key basis.
According to MP Muhanga, the President had realized he had been misled and was now willing to leave the matter of the Shs10bn budget, but even ensure that the legislators get more funding for the Covid19 constituency taskforces to be created soon. Therefore, in that spirit, Museveni would not have issues with MPs after they have exhausted the Shs50bn budget, analysts predict.
The only challenge, they add, is the fund’s legitimacy and how it will operate. Opposition MPs such as Kira Municipality Ibrahim Ssemujju Nganda, have insisted that all their people want for now is food and not committees or taskforces which might swallow the budget. But the NRM Caucus seems to agree that the opposition legislators and others who don’t think the proposed Shs50bn budget will be necessary are worried that it might be handled in a controversial way like the Shs10bn should be free to leave the money so that it can be used by those whose constituents need it. As they recover from the controversy surrounding the Shs20m each MP was allocated, the lawmakers seem to be falling into bigger things and they will soon, if the plan goes through, struggle to deny that it is not a campaign gift from Museveni.
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