Huge government spending an increasing worry to most Ugandans

KAMPALA – When President Yoweri Museveni paid for a 48-million-dollar new private jet using public funds, but without parliament’s prior nod, it did not come as a surprise to many Ugandans.

Presidential spending has grown increasingly extravagant throughout Museveni’s 23-year reign, says Nandala Mafabi, an opposition lawmaker who heads a parliamentary public accounts committee.’The first budget to be exhausted in this country is the State House budget,’ he said.It gets used up within the first quarter of a fiscal year, and the office goes begging for supplementary funds to see it through the rest of the year.Late last year, it emerged that Museveni had bought a US$48,2 million Gulfstream G550 because the older version of the plane had become a security risk as it needed refuelling stops on long-haul trips.’First and foremost, the president already had a plane. The man was not walking,’ said an incensed Mafabi.SKEWEDPRIORITIESThe administration’s seemingly unbridled spending has become an anti-government rallying point for critics in this east African country of 32 million people, who argue that official priorities need to be examined.’We have people displaced in this country. People who need food and to be resettled. We are talking about poverty in the villages. And now the president wants a top range plane?’ grumbled Mafabi.A 20-year civil conflict in the north of the country displaced about two million people, but recently many have returned to their homes.Although rated one of Africa’s fastest growing economies, Uganda was last year the world’s 23rd most impoverished country according to the United Nations Human Development Index.While government departments are entitled to supplementary budgets, they have to justify them. For example the health ministry last year applied for an additional 12 billion shillings (US$6 million) to buy more anti-HIV and malaria drugs as well as to contain ebola and cholera outbreaks.But all the 49 requests for an extra 15,3 billion shillings from State House only stated ‘to cater for shortfalls in the operational budget’.Establishing how the State House spends its money is problematic.’We have tried and we have failed to find out where this money goes,’ said Immelda Namagga of the Uganda Debt Network, an independent budget monitoring agency.Attempts by AFP to reach State House comptroller Richard Muhindo were futile.Parliament has powers to check all supplementary requests, but lawmakers lack the political courage to reject any request from Museveni’s office, observers say.’It seems the parliament … is not very effective,’ Namagga said.And ‘if the request comes from State House, it must pass in a minute’, said Mafabi.PAY AS YOU VOTEUganda’s parliament is dominated by Museveni’s National Resistance Movement.In 2005, after it passed a constitutional amendment scrapping presidential term limits to allow Museveni to run for a third time, several lawmakers confessed the long-time leader doled out five million shillings to each of them that backed the bill.Despite his party’s dominance of parliament, the recent jet-shopping was a discreet affair.Documents seen by AFP show that ex-finance minister Ezra Suruma instructed the central bank to wire funds for the plane on January 3 2008, a month before some of the key lawmakers had a chance to weigh in on the purchase.Only a parliamentary affairs committee – dominated by Museveni’s loyalists – was told by the president’s office in December 2007 of the plans to buy a new jet.But the committee had no powers to sign off the purchase.Suruma said funds for the new plane were budgeted for.Wamakhuyu Mudiimi, the ruling party deputy who chaired the meeting where lawmakers were asked to authorise the already completed purchase, confirmed ‘it is true the Bank of Uganda had already sent the money by the time we were informed.’’This was an illegal, and irregular transaction,’ charged Mafabi.Julius Mukunda, head of the Forum for Women in Democracy, a public budget analysis NGO, said Uganda budget priorities need to be re-evaluated.’With all the problems we have this country,’ he said, ‘the fact that one man and his family can get whatever they want is really too bad’.A rare opinion poll released last week pointed to growing disillusionment with the status quo.’Trust in both the ruling party and the president has gone down tremendously since the last poll was taken three years ago,’ said pollster Robert Sentamu, Wilkens Agencies director.Museveni has won Uganda’s three previous elections although his margin of victory has thinned with each vote from 75 per cent in 1996 to 59 per cent in 2006.- Nampa-AFP