SHOULD SHS 1,650,000,000 BE SPENT ON CONSULTATIONS CONCERNING THE MARRIAGE AND DIVORCE BILL?

If shs 1,650,000,000 is really available, and you are President of a poor country Uganda, would you really waste it into consultations by MPs with their Constituents over a Marriage and Divorce Bill?  This is at a time when there are allegations that some MPs went to the President and requested for his assistance given their bad financial situation!  There is no way that one can easily verify value for money in this transaction of shs 5,000,000 per MP.  President Museveni ought to understand the problem today, which is his Governments’ bad economic policies that are greatly responsible for the growing bad developments in the relationships people enjoy, as income most people get is peanuts given the cost of living.

Many families are falling apart because of the financial developments in households.  Many people more than double the work effort of the 70’s, where majority of women were not working and families were relatively stable.  Today, failure to get school fees for a child is enough to get a family fall apart!  President Museveni would have done better if the shs 1.65bn were put into value creation, not consumption. 

President Museveni is greatly responsible for the impoverished economic situation.  It is not clear whether he consulted very well on this matter, or that he just thought that money should be released.  It is common knowledge that this money was not put into the 2012/13 National Budget, in which case it must call for a Supplementary, whose net effect is creating more inflation.

The best President Museveni can do is to make necessary reforms in various laws including the re-instating of the Presidential terms, have MPs represent specific population figures; so that the number in Parliament is reduced, as well as get regional governments in place hence a federal arrangement and also eventually get a new Electoral Commission that is acceptable to the Opposition, and then he can come out with an early retirement programme.  Short of that, Uganda is simply gone!

William Kituuka Kiwanuka