Ever since he was elected as Speaker of the 11th Parliament, Jacob Oulanyah’s massage has always been premised on having a pro-people Parliament with high quality of debate.
Even on Tuesday when he returned to chair the plenary, he began with a serious caution to the lawmakers asking them to stop gambling on the floor of the House.
He also promised to ignore impulsive lawmakers standing just to talk for the sake of talking and be seen by their electorates but not adding value to the debate.
“You will not speak if you have not done the research; it must be evident. The era of gambling with speeches is over. Let’s do research; the era of throwing figures and statistics whose sources are not known is over. We want when people read the Hansard it is read as a document that can be quoted by researchers,” Oulanyah added.
“Let’s work, the society is watching and watching keenly what we are going to do. They are waiting.”
This is not the first time Oulanyah is emphasizing the point of having a cream of Members of Parliament that will put up a standard debate.
In the 10th Parliament, several MPs including Oulanyah who was a Deputy Speaker then came out and expressed their disappointment alluding that the nature of debates put up by some of their colleagues were too low as compared to the standards of the August House.
According to the Bufumbira East lawmaker also the former State Minister of Ethics Dr. James Nsaba Buturo, the quality of debate that was in the 10th Parliament was too disappointing because “some of the legislators were unfit for legislative work”.
Many studies have shown that many of the legislators in the past two Parliaments (9th and 10th) do not read extensively or research, before contributing to the debate in parliament. As a result, discussions are based on hearsay and are often less factual.
One of the surveys conducted in the last Parliament showed that out of a total of 459 members of Parliament, only 78 members scored above the 75 percent mark, which is considered excellent while 133 members scored between 50 and 74 percent which is considered good. However, the majority scored fairly and poorly with a performance below 49 percent and 25 percent respectively.
The leader of Opposition Mathias Mpuuga also confirms that the 10th Parliament had a lot of young people which heralded a sense of hope and carried a lot of expectations. However, he asserts that the young parliamentarians ended up being naïve and gullible and if Oulanyah does not put pressure on the quality of debates, the 11th Parliament might be the worst Parliament Uganda has ever had.
According to David Pulkol, the Executive Director of Africa Leadership Institute that compiles the report that tracks the performance of MPs, most members come to the House not knowing what to do.
“If he starts emphasizing ethical and high-quality debates, it will give MPs a challenge and they will embark on the required rules of the game. The 11th Parliament has many questions on its performance therefore it will require a strong and tough speaker who will whip MPs back to the original debates of quality.”
The former Speaker of Parliament Rebecca Kadaga also one time complained before President Yoweri Museveni about the quality of MPs especially those from the ruling party-NRM.
Oulanyah’s call comes just days after former Senior Presidential Press Secretary Joseph Tamale Mirundi claimed that majority of the MPs are too dumb and cannot speak on the floor of Parliament.
“That is why we have ministers and MPs who cannot explain a matter on the floor of Parliament. NRM has many MPs who did not make their maiden speeches in five years because they don’t know. In future, we shall need a Parliament that shall analyze all the laws which these past parliaments have passed because when it comes to debating it’s only MPs on the opposition who are very articulate. Although NRM has a two-thirds majority, most of them cannot stand and talk. They are just peasants who can only say ‘yes’, “ he said.
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