Govt should not give money to political parties
Aug 19, 2007
The Government intends to table a Bill in Parliament that seeks to legalise the funding of political parties from public resources. <b>Hamis Kaheru</b> and <b>John Odyek</b> interviewed Dokolo MP and former UPC Assistant Secretary General, <b>Cecilia Ogwal</b> about the plan.
The Government intends to table a Bill in Parliament that seeks to legalise the funding of political parties from public resources. Hamis Kaheru and John Odyek interviewed Dokolo MP and former UPC Assistant Secretary General, Cecilia Ogwal about the plan. Excerpts
QUESTION: Should the Government fund political parties?
- ANSWER: When we were agitating for multipartyism, we were under the monolithic Movement political system. You were a member by conscription not by consent. I consider that as a breach of my rights to belong to a party of my choice. That is why I have occasionally stepped on President Museveni’s nerves by saying he should apologise to Ugandans for having denied them their right to be in their respective parties for 20 years. When you ask our new generation to make a choice between multiparty and Movement political system, they would all choose the Movement because they grew up when the media was praising the Movement system and saying that parties were evil, satanic, bad, they caused war, and were responsible for promoting tribalism. Because of the unfair means by which the Movement political party was established it is important that parties be funded.
I say unfair because the Movement which is now a party was able to structure itself using state resources. There are still some remnants, for example the RDCs. The role RDCs are playing is political in nature yet in the multiparty dispensation the RDCs should be like the traditional DCs who should be non-partisan.
Under the UPC governments, were parties funded by the state?
No. And parties were not registered.
What has changed?
- In the past it was easy to get funded because you had two ideological blocks, the West and the East. If you could not be funded by the Eastern power, the Western powers would fund the party. But there were hybrids or home-brewed brands like Socialism in Tanzania. The Uganda Peoples Congress had the Congress Party of India as a natural ally. The Democratic Party also had allies, for example the Democratic Party of Germany. We were all allied to financially-established political institutions that would back us up. But these blocks were dismantled and it has not been easy going.
How should this funding be done?
- To have budget allocation for financing party activities, we must clearly define what those activities are. And the activities which have been carried out must be audited. The Auditor General and the IGG might come in where there is abuse.
You want funding particular activities instead of sending a specified amount, say sh1b, to each party?
- I would rather a party does not get funding from the Government. Ways should be found where we can raise money elsewhere, either from political friends, the private sector and so on. The moment the Government has a foothold in the party there would be many moles serving its interests. It would be like “I am going to give you but make sure Mr. Mukasa does not come to Parliament or make sure the party does not issue this kind of statement.†They will say “why should we give you money when you issue statements which malign the Government?†There is a tendency to put conditionalities. Parties should operate independent of the Government.
You say parties need financial support but at the same time you fear they might be manipulated through public funding. How do we strike a balance?
- We can fund certain activities without giving them money directly. You can pay rent directly to the landlords and wages. We can pay for meetings, workshops, conferences and transport to the venue. We can fund delegates’ conferences because these are statutory. We can look at the constitution of the party and see how many times it holds Central Executive Committee meetings in a year, how many times it holds National Council meetings, how many are the members, then you can work out a formula. This is different from giving money to run parties. Let us look at activities which are well defined in the party constitution. Cater for Central Executive Committee meetings, National Council meetings, Delegates Conference and some funds for stationery. You don’t even give them the money. You can have an accountant from the Government to pay those who have attended. It would be abuse of tax payers’ money to say let us give sh1b to a party.
Can’t party leaders at the headquarters receive the money and pay for the activities you have mentioned?
- You go and pay the members directly. Otherwise they can tell you that 2,000 people are coming and only 800 come, then they share the money meant for 1,200 people. We are dealing with people we cannot trust. Let us look at other countries, how are they funding parties? I think this debate will provoke a lot of ideas. I believe that a lot of people will give information on this topic.
Should all parties receive the kind of support you are advocating?
- No. We must know the size of the party. It is not just saying because we were formed 30 or 40 years ago. A party which was formed yesterday could be more nationalistic or command more membership. We are going to face a dilemma because in some areas one person may have two or three cards; FDC card, UPC card, NRM card. We need to design a mechanism of establishing the number of members of each party.
So the more members a party has the more money it should get?
- I think so because it means then you are a serious party. You can use many mechanisms to gauge the membership. For example, how many members do you have in the Local Councils? The Local Council is the best gauge because it shows how locally rooted that party is. A party may send a member to Parliament but does not have even one member on the LC3 or LC5 in the district. Then you wonder who voted the MP? If the people who voted this MP cannot vote district councillors, did this man go through on party platform or people just liked him because of his personality or some other reason. So we need to find a mechanism. Section 20 of the Political Parties and Organisations Act provides for the National Consultative Forum for political parties. Once we form that forum the parties would work out some modalities.
If funding is based on membership, strong parties may grow stronger and weak ones die out?
- We are trying to avoid funding falsehood. The Movement may come up with 20 parties under different names. They can send cadre so and so to register a party. They work in collaboration but under different names. Even when they come in Parliament they are the same. But they are happy because they are using government money. How to plug these loopholes is what I am trying to direct your mind to. What do we do? It is true that the Government has a majority in Parliament and the Local Councils and therefore it would get more money compared to others. But the moment you open the doors, you are going to have so many people forming parties.
You think tagging funding to representation on Local Councils is a good idea?
- It is a good gauge. Are you going to fund a village party or a regional party or a district party? How spread out a party is should be another gauge. It does not matter how old the party is, whether it is CP, DP or UPC but how spread out it is. DP used to be in Buganda, Busoga, Teso and Lango. But now you find DP is only in Buganda. Does it deserve to be called a nationalistic party? You may have one or two members identifying themselves with the party but are they active? What is there to show on the ground that the party is active? I had the benefit of moving with DP when I was campaigning with Paul Ssemogerere under IPFC in 1996. You could see that UPC, despite its problems, had structures on the ground. Our sister party DP had persons in several areas but no structures in those areas. You would find individuals very active, noisy but the structures were not there. We need to look at all these things before we come out with an ideal formula.
Your major worry is that direct funding may erode the independence of parties?
- Yes. Political parties are supposed to be independent of the state. I was privileged to have worked for a party when that party was also in government. There must be a clear demarcation between the political party institutions and the state institutions. Political parties must maintain that independence. They should not be manipulated by the government. That is the only way to show their political strength to steer the mind of the people in the direction they want it to be. Political parties are really supposed to play their civic role in exerting necessary pressure on the government in order to steer the country in the direction they want.
QUESTION: Should the Government fund political parties?
- ANSWER: When we were agitating for multipartyism, we were under the monolithic Movement political system. You were a member by conscription not by consent. I consider that as a breach of my rights to belong to a party of my choice. That is why I have occasionally stepped on President Museveni’s nerves by saying he should apologise to Ugandans for having denied them their right to be in their respective parties for 20 years. When you ask our new generation to make a choice between multiparty and Movement political system, they would all choose the Movement because they grew up when the media was praising the Movement system and saying that parties were evil, satanic, bad, they caused war, and were responsible for promoting tribalism. Because of the unfair means by which the Movement political party was established it is important that parties be funded.
I say unfair because the Movement which is now a party was able to structure itself using state resources. There are still some remnants, for example the RDCs. The role RDCs are playing is political in nature yet in the multiparty dispensation the RDCs should be like the traditional DCs who should be non-partisan.
Under the UPC governments, were parties funded by the state?
No. And parties were not registered.
What has changed?
- In the past it was easy to get funded because you had two ideological blocks, the West and the East. If you could not be funded by the Eastern power, the Western powers would fund the party. But there were hybrids or home-brewed brands like Socialism in Tanzania. The Uganda Peoples Congress had the Congress Party of India as a natural ally. The Democratic Party also had allies, for example the Democratic Party of Germany. We were all allied to financially-established political institutions that would back us up. But these blocks were dismantled and it has not been easy going.
How should this funding be done?
- To have budget allocation for financing party activities, we must clearly define what those activities are. And the activities which have been carried out must be audited. The Auditor General and the IGG might come in where there is abuse.
You want funding particular activities instead of sending a specified amount, say sh1b, to each party?
- I would rather a party does not get funding from the Government. Ways should be found where we can raise money elsewhere, either from political friends, the private sector and so on. The moment the Government has a foothold in the party there would be many moles serving its interests. It would be like “I am going to give you but make sure Mr. Mukasa does not come to Parliament or make sure the party does not issue this kind of statement.†They will say “why should we give you money when you issue statements which malign the Government?†There is a tendency to put conditionalities. Parties should operate independent of the Government.
You say parties need financial support but at the same time you fear they might be manipulated through public funding. How do we strike a balance?
- We can fund certain activities without giving them money directly. You can pay rent directly to the landlords and wages. We can pay for meetings, workshops, conferences and transport to the venue. We can fund delegates’ conferences because these are statutory. We can look at the constitution of the party and see how many times it holds Central Executive Committee meetings in a year, how many times it holds National Council meetings, how many are the members, then you can work out a formula. This is different from giving money to run parties. Let us look at activities which are well defined in the party constitution. Cater for Central Executive Committee meetings, National Council meetings, Delegates Conference and some funds for stationery. You don’t even give them the money. You can have an accountant from the Government to pay those who have attended. It would be abuse of tax payers’ money to say let us give sh1b to a party.
Can’t party leaders at the headquarters receive the money and pay for the activities you have mentioned?
- You go and pay the members directly. Otherwise they can tell you that 2,000 people are coming and only 800 come, then they share the money meant for 1,200 people. We are dealing with people we cannot trust. Let us look at other countries, how are they funding parties? I think this debate will provoke a lot of ideas. I believe that a lot of people will give information on this topic.
Should all parties receive the kind of support you are advocating?
- No. We must know the size of the party. It is not just saying because we were formed 30 or 40 years ago. A party which was formed yesterday could be more nationalistic or command more membership. We are going to face a dilemma because in some areas one person may have two or three cards; FDC card, UPC card, NRM card. We need to design a mechanism of establishing the number of members of each party.
So the more members a party has the more money it should get?
- I think so because it means then you are a serious party. You can use many mechanisms to gauge the membership. For example, how many members do you have in the Local Councils? The Local Council is the best gauge because it shows how locally rooted that party is. A party may send a member to Parliament but does not have even one member on the LC3 or LC5 in the district. Then you wonder who voted the MP? If the people who voted this MP cannot vote district councillors, did this man go through on party platform or people just liked him because of his personality or some other reason. So we need to find a mechanism. Section 20 of the Political Parties and Organisations Act provides for the National Consultative Forum for political parties. Once we form that forum the parties would work out some modalities.
If funding is based on membership, strong parties may grow stronger and weak ones die out?
- We are trying to avoid funding falsehood. The Movement may come up with 20 parties under different names. They can send cadre so and so to register a party. They work in collaboration but under different names. Even when they come in Parliament they are the same. But they are happy because they are using government money. How to plug these loopholes is what I am trying to direct your mind to. What do we do? It is true that the Government has a majority in Parliament and the Local Councils and therefore it would get more money compared to others. But the moment you open the doors, you are going to have so many people forming parties.
You think tagging funding to representation on Local Councils is a good idea?
- It is a good gauge. Are you going to fund a village party or a regional party or a district party? How spread out a party is should be another gauge. It does not matter how old the party is, whether it is CP, DP or UPC but how spread out it is. DP used to be in Buganda, Busoga, Teso and Lango. But now you find DP is only in Buganda. Does it deserve to be called a nationalistic party? You may have one or two members identifying themselves with the party but are they active? What is there to show on the ground that the party is active? I had the benefit of moving with DP when I was campaigning with Paul Ssemogerere under IPFC in 1996. You could see that UPC, despite its problems, had structures on the ground. Our sister party DP had persons in several areas but no structures in those areas. You would find individuals very active, noisy but the structures were not there. We need to look at all these things before we come out with an ideal formula.
Your major worry is that direct funding may erode the independence of parties?
- Yes. Political parties are supposed to be independent of the state. I was privileged to have worked for a party when that party was also in government. There must be a clear demarcation between the political party institutions and the state institutions. Political parties must maintain that independence. They should not be manipulated by the government. That is the only way to show their political strength to steer the mind of the people in the direction they want it to be. Political parties are really supposed to play their civic role in exerting necessary pressure on the government in order to steer the country in the direction they want.