This week electoral reforms were in the news.
The civil society have long argued that there needs to be a
total overhaul of the Electoral Commission, that for instance it should not be
constituted by the executive but come through consultations with all the
political forces in the country. They of course advocate for a return to
presidential term limits.
President Yoweri Museveni argued this week that a more
robust electoral process that would include an electronic voting would do away
with the worst excesses of rigging that cost the NRM candidate victory in the
recently concluded Luwero Woman MP position. Of course the opposition did not
complain of any electoral malpractice after they were declared victorious.
I think these will be cosmetic changes which may improve the
voting process but not fix what is essentially problematic with our democratic
process.
The main problem of our politics is the way we elect our
leaders. We have adopted stock-lock-and-barrel a system whose historical
development does not mirror our own.
Parliamentary democracy arose as a counterweight to the
monarchy in Europe. The people who pushed for parliamentary representation were
the emerging class of industrialists and land owners who felt they needed to
push their interests with the crown but were shut out of the royal court. So
they set about designing an alternative power center, negotiating where they
could with the realm but also loping off the monarch’s heads if the need arose.
So it came to be that elected members, who were initially
only voted for by male, tax payers, represented industrialists, businessmen and
professionals seeking to leverage the state to advance their interests.
Geographical location of constituencies was just to make
sure that the interest groups had a national character but was not initially
intended to have token representation from all over the country.
Fast forward to the present day. In the case of Uganda we have a parliament
all 388-strong, who are elected on rather dubious grounds that reflect no
sustainable and cross cutting interests. Maybe the 112 women district representatives
or the 10 UPDF or the five youth, disabilities or worker representatives would
be a good start.
Out of political pragmatism we could have some regional
representation of these interest groups just like we already do for the youth
and people with disabilities.
Straight off the bat we would cut down the size of
parliament and the cattle herders from Karamoja will be as well served by their
regional representative as that one from western Uganda who is urging
government to commit more funds to valley dams or research into rinderpest.
Of course such a proposal will not see the light of day –
you cannot ask the monkeys to vote on the fate of the forest, but if we are
going to have political discussions on issues this would be one way of speeding
up the process.
Even if the subsistence farmer party wins several elections
in a row in batting for their own interests one can expect that with time the
quality of the farmers will improve and some will graduate to the commercial
farmers party reducing the size of their former party with time.
To illustrate how impractical our current system is, there
is an MP who graduated from campus on 20 years ago, he has been in parliament
ever since. This MP has not done an honest day’s work in his life. He does not
represent the workers as he does not know what it means to be a worker. He does
not represent the traders as all his endeavours have floundered badly and some
are still surviving, only because they are subsisting on his huge paycheck. This
former OB of mine has no real life experience in the productive sectors of this
country. Who is he representing?
