Parliament should enact stringent anti corruption laws

 

 

If Kadaga was genuinely championing anti corruption crusade in Parliament, then she should dig deep but stay outside the hole.  Our Speaker should strive to ensure that stringent anti corruption laws are enacted. Such laws will enable courts of law to even order the sale of properties acquired by the Government officials in a corrupt manner to recover embezzled funds. Kadaga needs to know that bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny against the voiceless Ugandan majority in the face of corruption. Weak anti corruption laws have made many Ugandans devices in a wheel for politicians to ride on to their corruption bonanza.

 

Whereas is a major obstacle in the process of our country’s economic development and modernisation, Ugandans affected by negative impact of corruption are questioning Kadaga’s political intentions of hastening with the list of a strong legal framework against the vice. At best Kadaga is making corruption more unmanageable by blowing hot and cold in her position as Speaker of Parliament. It would seem the 9^th Parliament is already stung by poisonous corruption flies! The public is more interested in seeing sophisticated anti corruption laws in place than Kadaga’s proposed list of corrupt legislators.

 

The ghost of corruption that has for years dined in various government departments is also residing in Parliament but hidden under the Parliamentary carpet. I am afraid if the Parliamentary carpet is turned upside-down, the ghost of corruption may not spare any member in the House. Remember the 9^th Parliament led by Hon. Kadaga herself has made the House a popularist tool against corruption but plays seek and hide game when it comes to enacting the required laws to stamp out the cancer. Still it is the same Parliament that threw journalists out of the House before legislators could bribe their own consciences to give themselves hefty salary and allowances, hence turning themselves into “slave drivers” who have forced Ugandans to carry the heavy burden in the mug of poverty. If this is not an act of political corruption and impairing integrity, then what is it?

 

It is true that some corrupt legislators will always turn a blind eye to the suffering that corruption inflicts on others.

 

For instance, after doing itself the best service, Kadaga’s 9^th Parliament became blind when it came to teachers salary increment. The reason is simple, heavily satisfied horses will not understand that there are hungry folk outside their own domain! So, how will Kadaga’s list reconcile this kind of Parliamentary conspiracy? The Speaker needs to understand a philosophical saying that, “If you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” The longer Kadaga takes to enact tougher anti corruption laws, the more culpable she will become before the public eye.

 

Since the Speaker of Parliament has power on her side, let her save poor Ugandans who cannot find drugs in the Government hospitals due to corruption and give us better anti corruption laws. Remember these words: “Then I looked again at all the injustice that goes on in this world. The oppressed were weeping, and no one would help them. No one would help them, because their oppressors had power on their side,” Ecclesiastes 4:1.

 

Finally, let our leaders mean business and stop sowing the wind in a society bleeding with serious effects of corruption, else they should expect to reap a storm. We should stop politics of “old pretenders” and show real action. Uganda deserves a list of excellent anti corruption laws not a list of corrupt legislators.