The recent release and allocation of Shs10b to political parties with representation in Parliament by the Electoral Commission (EC) has once again brought into sharp focus the ability of the country’s laws to provide a level playing field for all parties.
The formula for distributing the money to the recipient parties, as adopted in the current law, has been criticised for perpetrating the dominance of the ruling party. Critics favour computing the allocations basing on the number of votes cast for the parliamentary candidates instead of basing on the numerical strength of the respective parties in Parliament as it currently is.
According to the amendments to the Political Parties and Organisations Act made in 2010, the government is supposed to “contribute funds or other public resources towards the activities of political parties or organisations represented in Parliament…”
The benefiting parties are to be funded “in respect of elections and their normal day-to-day activities.”
Regarding elections, the participating parties are supposed to be funded equally and the funding for day-to-day activities is supposed to be based on the numerical strength of each political party in Parliament.
The funds released to parties from the public coffers are subject to audit by the Auditor General.
The recent announcement by the Electoral Commission that the government had released Shs10b for distribution among the six parties that have representation in Parliament, however, was a bit of a surprise to many despite the fact that the funding had been delayed for four years.
Seeming to have been caught unawares about the plan to release the money, Democratic Party (DP) spokespeople said they would donate part of the money to child care homes, while Uganda Peoples Congress (UPC) vice president Joseph Bossa said he was unaware of plans to give their party money.
Other questions regarding the funds ranged from the motive of the ruling party, which made off with more than three quarters of the money owing to its numerical superiority in Parliament, to the timing of the release of the funds.
The only party which seemed aware of the release of the money before the announcement was made was NRM. The day the Electoral Commission announced the release of the money, NRM treasurer Rose Namayanja confirmed to Daily Monitor that her party had already received its chunk of Shs7.9 billion.
Days later, the ruling party unveiled brand new SUV cars for its new administrative team, which it said had cost in total Shs3.1 billion, although deputy treasurer Kenneth Omona insisted that the cars had not been bought using the money allocated to the party by the Electoral Commission.
Questions linger as to whether the ruling party first identified a need and decided to allocate finances for funding political parties with the view to cashing in on it.
Our attempts to establish from the ministry of Finance from which vote the money was drawn was futile, but it was not indicated in the current national Budget that there would be money for funding political parties’ day-to-day activities.
The new questions feed into the older ones in more ways than one. When the party funding law was being mooted, the political Opposition and other activists argued that a specific percentage of the budget should be dedicated to the funding of parties for avoidance of doubt.
Further in support of this suggestion, it was that if it was done otherwise, the ruling party, which could have access to public resources through other ways, should not be allowed the privilege of determining how much to allocate to the other parties.
Questions about formula
The other issue is about the sharing of the money. NRM, due to its numerical superiority in Parliament, received over three quarters of the money – Shs7.9b, leaving the other five parties to share the remaining Shs2.1b.
NRM has 259 MPs, including those who are directly elected, workers’ representatives, women representatives and Youth MPs, while FDC has a total of 37 legislators. DP has 15, UPC 10 and Jeema and Conservative Party (CP) have one legislator apiece.
The categories of MPs who don’t qualify for public funding under the current law are the ones on independent ticket, army representatives and ex-officio members.
If the formula of basing on the votes cast for parliamentary candidates for the respective parties had been adopted instead of basing on the number of legislators, which government critics wanted, had been adopted, NRM would have received Shs6.8b out of the Shs10b available, which is Shs1b less than it received under the current arrangement.
NRM parliamentary candidates garnered a combined total of 3,810,201 votes in the last election, which is 68 per cent of the total 5,569,692 votes cast for the candidates of all the 14 parties that fielded parliamentary candidates.
The Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), basing on this formula, would have improved its earning from the Shs10b, up to Shs1.6b from the Shs1.1b it is now entitled to. FDC’s parliamentary candidates polled a combined total of 876, 626 votes.
The biggest beneficiary if the calculations had been based on votes cast for parliamentary candidates, however, would be DP, which would get more than double the money it is supposed to receive under the current arrangement.
DP fielded a total of 84 candidates and although the majority of them did not win seats, the party’s parliamentary candidates jointly picked up a total of 463,571 votes, which is almost double the 264,117 votes cast for UPC’s parliamentary candidates.
The general idea is that the more votes a party attracts, even if it doesn’t win seats as a result, the more public financing it should get, so that no vote is cast in vain.
To demonstrate that basing on the number of legislators a party has in the House may not bear out the idea of rewarding parties for getting more votes, one need look no farther than the financial allocations to DP and UPC out of the Shs10b available.
DP, with a total of 15 MPs, gets Shs464m while UPC’s 10 MPs entitle the party to Shs309m under the current arrangement.
If the formula had been the votes cast for parliamentary candidates, DP would have pocketed Shs832m while UPC would have gotten just about half of that, Shs474m. But, important to note, each of the parties would still have got more out of the available Shs10b than they got under the current system.
Breaking NRM’s “unfair” dominance
The question may be asked, however, whether it matters that Opposition parties get more funding vis-a-vis the ruling party. Dr Paul Ssemogerere, a former leader of DP and two-time presidential candidate, thinks so.
He says: “NRM has a built-in structural dominance over other parties arising from the subsistence of its historical status and role. This dominance arises from the organisation’s previous monopoly of political space before it was opened up for other political parties, coupled with its structural interlocking with the State, in particular with the military and intelligence establishments as well as the local government authorities.”
Dr Ssemogerere adds: “This party-State relationship is graphically presented within the executive chairman of the NRM/NRM-O who is at the same time the chairman of the (military) high command, commander-in-chief of the armed forces and executive president and head of state. The same person is the appointing authority of central government political officials at the local government level, notably the Resident District Commissioners who play an active role in political mobilisation through the local government structures and who are also the chairmen of the respective security committees in their districts.”
Dr Ssemogerere makes these arguments in a book; Political Party Financing in Uganda: A Critical Analysis in Reference to Other Countries.
First published in 2011 and again in 2013 with the help of the German Foundation Konrad Adenauer, the book is probably the most elaborate critique of the emerging political party financing mechanism to-date.
Dr Ssemogerere develops what he calls a “six-feature model” for improving the public funding of political parties, drawing lessons from Ghana, South Africa, Germany, the US and other countries.
On basing on the parties’ numerical strength in Parliament, rather than the votes cast in favour of the parties as the basis for the level of funding for the day-to-day activities of the eligible political parties, Dr Ssemogerere warns that financing model – which favours the ruling party – could “perpetuate the dominance of the original single party under monolithic rule.”
To make matters worse, Dr Ssemogerere adds, the incumbent President is allowed “unregulated handouts during his election campaign” through the vote for presidential donations, in addition to being allowed to retain the privileges “ordinarily attached to his office.”
Pressing the issue farther
Another unending debate is whether just having an MP should be enough to qualify a party for public funding. Because the law provides for funding political parties that have representation in Parliament, the Conservative Party (CP) and Jeema, which have one legislator apiece, will each bag Shs40m.
There are 29 registered political parties in Uganda, according to the Electoral Commission website, and not all of them can qualify for public funding, necessitating the need for prescribing a threshold for public funding. The threshold could be in terms of candidates fielded or votes won in the previous election, or indeed seats won.
But, consider this. Ms Beti Kamya’s Uganda Federal Alliance (UFA) fielded 47 parliamentary candidates across the country in the last election, winning 20,026 votes among them. The party, on top of that, fielded a presidential candidate, who garnered some 52,782 votes.
But because none of its candidates got elected to Parliament, UFA misses out on public funding and the CP, which fielded parliamentary candidates in only six constituencies and had no presidential candidate, scoops Shs40m because it won a solitary parliamentary seat.
The implication of this arrangement could be that instead of improving on its record of 2011 by fielding more and perhaps stronger candidates in more constituencies, UFA could turn out weaker for next year’s election due to lack of funding.
On the other hand, CP could lack incentive to spread out to attain a more national outlook by fielding more candidates in more constituencies and instead focus on very few places in which it stands a chance of winning a parliamentary seat and maintain the public funding.
Inadvertently, therefore, could this policy end up rewarding less work and punishing ambition and hard work on the part of parties?
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