MPs burdened by calls for financial handouts

By Moses Walubiri & Pearl Agasha

A new survey that seeks to expose the financial strain legislators are grappling with indicates that eight out of every ten calls MPs receive from their constituents are about requests for financial handouts.

The survey conducted over the last 12 months by a loose coalition of 14 Civil Society Organizations was released earlier Tuesday at Hotel Africana.

The survey was aimed at exposing the extent of commercialization of politics in all its guises, with 146 MPs out of the targeted sample size of 275 MPs taking part.

The survey indicates that on average, a legislator spends sh4.6m on a constituency visit, with 88% of those sampled admitting getting importuned with requests for donations.

When asked why they continue meeting personal expenses of their constituents yet it's outside their ambit, 59% admitted that the current political dynamics which has seen majority take such handouts as normal has left them with no option.

"Everyone is doing it," some of the MPs sampled admitted, indicating that it would be politically suicidal to decline getting 'milked.'

In terms of region, MPs from Western Uganda spend highest per constituency visit (sh6m), followed by East (sh4.6), Central (sh4.5) and North (2.6).

MPs also noted that their constituents expect them to contribute to public projects that should ordinarily be the ambit of government.

In this regard, Independent MPs do feel the pinch most, spending on average sh85m, followed by those affiliated to the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM), and opposition (sh25m).

According to Cissy Kagaba, Executive Director Anti-Corruption Coalition Uganda and Peter Wandera of Transparency International Uganda, government should urgently consider putting a cap on how much individuals should sink into elections to avoid the specter of filling parliament with "terrible legislators with loads of money."

"If this is not done, we shall soon have a parliament of businessmen and women," Wandera said, warning that decent members of the public will soon shun politics. "Why should someone spend sh500m on an election that he is not sure of winning?" Wandera said.

The development comes at a time when the issue of legislators wallowing in debt as a result of living well beyond their means has forced the top echelon of parliament to change the rules on legislators using their salaries and emoluments as security for loans from banks and loan sharks.

Last year, Kadaga announced that parliament had stopped underwriting loans taken by legislators, saying that the days of the legislature being reduced to a clearing house for loans was truly over.

There are concerns that the ease with which MPs acquire loans has spawned financial indiscipline, especially among young legislators to whom their parliamentary seats are their first 'meaningful jobs' after school.

During an NRM caucus last year in which a section of MPs pleaded for a financial bailout, President Yoweri Museveni gave legislators a tutorial on financial literacy, warning that "financially beleaguered people should not be in charge of Uganda's destiny."