OPPOSITION MP’s ‘WALK FROM WORK’
The shameful behaviour of sections of the opposition continued yesterday when they staged a ‘walk FROM work’ protests as they left the chambers during President Museveni’s State of the Nation address. This unprecedented behaviour, reminding this correspondent of recent events in the Seychelles where the losing opposition vowed to stay away from parliament too in total disregard of their mandate and duty to represent their own voters and live up to democratic principles, will leave many Ugandans wondering why they gave their votes to the few opposition MP’s in the first place, if those are not able to play by the rules and be there when it matters most.
A jovial president, unperturbed by the deserters, in fact quipped to the Speaker if those going AWOL would be able to drawn any allowances for attendance of a parliamentary session, causing wild laughter following the last leaving the chambers, but on a more serious note, when will African opposition parties ever learn that elections are won by standing up FOR something and offering credible alternative policies instead of pursuing a singular aim of being AGAINST everything and only wanting to capture government, in our Ugandan case clearly by literally any means.
In an interesting side development did also yesterday the Speaker of the House of Commons in London tell MP’s who came to the chamber after the Foreign Secretary started his statement about events in Libya and the Middle East, that he would not allow them questions on the subject as they had come late – a hint to our own Lady Speaker to consider when parliament discussed the State of the Nation address.
There are still a lot of Ugandans out there who need to be represented by their MP’s in parliament, considerably less than a third of MP’s going by the present distribution of seats but Ugandans nevertheless who freely practiced their choice in the voting booth. Are they to be abandoned and cast aside by their elected representatives now that they have served their purpose, only to be remembered in four and a half years time when the next elections come calling? It is high time to see through the opposition’s shenanigans, and after the ‘walk to work’ and ‘hoot in traffic’ campaigns have miserably failed – mainly because they were once more against and not FOR something – and have those ‘working’ members of parliament and in particular our new government show Ugandans that they DO have their interest at heart and WILL work to improve their circumstances and DELIVER on elections promises made so that during the next elections the deserters and absentees can get their score cards from voters reading ‘failed’.
