By Kabuye Ronald
Evidence and Methods Lab together with Agora and Actionaid have curated the citizen voices on the Uganda Parliament Exhibition that exposed corruption, financial mismanagement and irregularities that transpires in Uganda’s parliament into a report which has been released on Tuesday morning in Kampala.
According to Michael Katagaya, the team leader at Evidence and Methods Lab, in preparing the report, they utilized data scraping and analytical tools to analyze tweets from the x platform.
“Our Comprehensive analysis involved examining a total of 2,730 tweets including retweets and quoted tweets made for three weeks starting from February 26, 2024. The total engagement from these tweets amounted to 768.4k with social reach of 3.7m and total mentions of 660k. Additionally, the number of likes received was 81,395.” Said Katagaya.
The report highlighted some of the key issues that featured prominently during the exhibition which included Corruption, nepotism, financial mismanagement, misuse of public funds, critique of political leadership, demand of accountability and transparency, ethical considerations, skepticism of political parties and opposition figures, demand for industrial reforms and advocacy for alternative governance models.
Some of the recommendations in the report include urging government to take immediate and concrete steps to enhance transparency and accountability with in parliament. Enhancing public engagement and participation in decision making, end corruption and wastage of public funds.
Others include calls for resignation of some members of parliament like speaker, commissioners among others and reform of parliamentary procedures.
Munira Ali, the head of strategic partnerships and public relations in the office of the Inspector General of Government IGG applauded the public for speaking out against corruption since it makes much impact. “The authorities have a bigger role to play but the public has a much role to play since their voices make a lot of impact”.
Commenting about the failure to protect whistle blowers, Munira faulted the whistleblowers for exposing themselves by taking the same complaint before the media or back to the people they have reported which makes it so difficult for the IGG to protect them as required.
“The Whistleblowers act has to protect what we call whistle blowers but that can only be done if when they come to us they don’t tell anybody because the IGG doesn’t disclose those who report cases but before you know it, the actual complainant is with the media and then somebody comes back and complains that they have been victimized at office and or are facing other repercussions because of their complaint. What we do is to urge them that whenever you report to IGG or any other agency you have an obligation to keep it confidential. You don’t go out to expose yourself even when you want to tell the media don’t expose your identity, only state the issues without exposing yourself.” Said Munira
Patrick Nsamba Oshabe the Member of Parliament for Kassanda North Constituency who represented the leader of opposition in parliament said that must times parliament is unchecked because of the manipulation of the legislators and oversight agencies thus urging the public not to give up but rather to continue raising and making the entities and individuals accountable.
Oshabe also put all the blame on the parliamentary system that give the presiding officer or speaker the most power to the extent that when you question the irregular and illegal happenings in parliament you end up in the disciplinary committee.
Despite inviting parliament authorities and the head of corporate affairs and public relations, they made no show
