Speaker's ruling on rebel MPs, a recipe for anarchy

By Henry Mayega

The May 2, 2013 Speaker’s ruling that allowed expelled NRM MPs to stay in Parliament is a recipe for anarchy in our multiparty democracy.  

The affected MPs who included; Theodore Ssekikubo, Mohammed Nsereko, Barnabas Tinkasimire and Wilfred Nuwagaba had been expelled by the NRM’s disciplinary committee due to their flagrant violation of NRM’s constitution and code of conduct.

First, it is normal for parties the world over to discipline their membership.  The Chinese Central Commission for Discipline Inspection of the Communist Party, for example totaling 130 people, is charged with the responsibility of rooting out indiscipline and malfeasances.

The indisciplined party cadres are investigated and prosecuted separately from the Chinese Government apparatus (called Shuanggui).  Prosecuted cadres have included powerful party officials like Bo Xili who recently lost his high political standing due to indiscipline.  It is in this ambit that the NRM acted to negatively reward indiscipline by painfully expelling the errant MPs.

It is, therefore, surprising that the Speaker of our National Assembly has chosen the path of positively rewarding indiscipline by allowing the ‘wonderful’ MPs to stay in Parliament.  This reward should worry all those who espouse order, discipline and parties without malfeasance or malcontents.  

In other words, all parties should be as concerned as the NRM, should any one of their members turn into a malcontent.  The Speaker should equally be concerned about any deviation from discipline, especially in her Party, the NRM.

And when the Speaker made her ruling, the most excited, apart from the affected MPs, were MPs from the opposition, not from the NRM.  Doesn’t that speak volumes to the Speaker?  In her ruling, the Speaker also quoted crossing to another political entity as one of the ways through which an MP loses his/her seat.  She also said that, when asked by the NRM’s Chief Whip where the affected MPs would sit in Parliament, they would sit in the middle compartment.

Now, the NRM sponsored those ‘wonderful’ MPs to go to Parliament in which case they ought to sit on the ruling party’s side.  That sponsorship was not in vain, it was for the purpose of articulating NRM’s ideals and its manifesto to the later for five years that end in 2016.  

Can the Speaker and those excited MPs from the opposition tell the citizens of Uganda which ideals and manifesto will Ssekikubo, Nsereko, Nuwagaba and Tinkasimire articulate in the remaining three years of the current NRM administration?  Are they going to craft ideals on individual merit-based manifesto?  We need answers.

Generally speaking our Parliament has four sides: The Government, Opposition, UPDF and Independents.  By the Speaker talking about the middle compartment for errant MPs, she is redefining the very tenets of our four sided parliamentary democracy.  Churches and Mosques have no arguing side that is where compartments belong.

Clearly, the people of Lwemiyaga, Kampala Central, Buyaga West and Ndorwa East elected a manifesto – the NRM Manifesto, not another.  Who is this one disenfranchising Ugandans in these constituencies by imposing on them other manifestos?  I do not see the expelled MPs effectively representing the affected constituencies for the next three years, for that would run against peoples’ democratic rights endorsed in the elections of 2011 which returned the NRM as the dominant party, not any other.  

To do so would expressly violate not only their democratic rights but also those of the rest of Ugandans who respected the outcome of those general elections.

Agreed, Article 83 of the Constitution says, in part, that an MP loses his/her seat if they leave the political party on whose ticket they were elected.  The one million dollar question is on expulsion, does an MP stay in that political party?  Would they not be presumed to have left?  I have already heard some of them say it is good riddance because the NRM is a rotten party.  

If the Speaker says the affected MPs will sit in the middle compartment, is that the NRM side to which they were elected and sent.

Parliament itself has its rules and regulations just like parties.  One of them says that if an MP misses 15 house sittings, they are dismissed automatically, why does the  Speaker and those excited opposition MPs wish order for Parliament and not the NRM.

In my view, the NRM should not waver from its efforts to fight indiscipline.  All remedial measures should be taken to correct even the very ruling of the Speaker.

Henry Mayega

SPECIAL MOBILISER, NRM