Nairobi — France's most famous queen, Marie Antoinette, bequeathed us arguably the most famous phrase preceding the French Revolution, when she advised starving Parisians to: Qu'ils mangent de la brioche ("If they have no bread, then let them eat cake!")

For that tartly tongue, the good woman had her head fed to the guillotine in an orgy of violence that swept France in the years immediately following 1789, and which subsequently led to the total repudiation of all royal privilege.

Queen Antoinette's utterances are instructive as we watch African big men (and women) continually break into song in the form of "democracy is not cheap" every time someone points out how expensive their so-called democracy projects are, and how much they drain national coffers of badly needed funds for the proverbial bread.

Two unrelated examples from Kampala illustrate this point.

One came from the National Assembly this week, where officials of the Electoral Commission appeared before a select committee and defended plans to carry out the umpteenth round of voter registration, this time ahead of some local council elections. Commissioners Joseph Biribonwa and Sister Margaret Magoba told the Parliamentary Committee on Legal and Parliamentary Affairs that they had to carry out a fresh registration drive just months after a very expensive national election because the new local elections (mostly to fill village committees), were governed by separate legislation.

Semantics apart, Electoral Commission officials and the government they serve are simply creating work (and allowances) for themselves, relatives, and their partisan cronies. In simple English, people registered to vote for February's elections (in which President Yoweri Museveni won another five-year term that should take his tally to 25 years and counting by 2011). During that election, voters also chose their Members of Parliament. A few weeks later, they elected district chairs, councillors, and mayors. It is these same voters, not Kenyans or Burundians, who are set to vote in the latest local government elections. So what's up with this Electoral Commission beyond the typical feeding frenzy that characterises much of Uganda's public life? Nothing really; the EC officials are doing what their political masters do all the time - turning Uganda's misfortune into private pots of gold.

The second example was the announcement by Uganda's National Water & Sewerage Corporation that it plans to introduce pre-paid water metres in the country. The corporation boss, William Muhairwe, who was also facing MPs at another select committee, declared that corporation would throw all of USh 7 billion (KSh 280 million) at the problem, so that "poor people in urban centres will be able to get water cheaply using cards or coins," as well as fend off unscrupulous water dealers.

Quite what Muhairwe and his engineers have in mind is hard to fathom. But one thing is certain: it has nothing to do with poor people or their access to clean water.

Again in plain English, the majority of Kampala residents and surrounding environs are so desperately poor they can't even afford the requisite three meals a day that the World Health Organisation suggests are required for optimal sustenance. It goes without saying that they cannot afford water, either - whether it's metered or prepaid. Indeed, most of those who can't afford to buy the day's supply 'harvest' water from open streams and wells that that are home to millions of deadly pathogens that make poverty one of the worst illnesses in the country. These poor dears will probably never even know that no less than the Constitution of Uganda guarantees them a right to clean drinking water!

Elsewhere where more accountable governments reign, indigents (the disabled, the very ill and the very young) receive social grants which make life a little more bearable. No such programme exists in Uganda (to be fair, it does not exist anywhere else on the continent except perhaps in South Africa and Libya). Moreover, the privatisation of water appears to have gathered pace in recent years as the World Bank and other multilateral lenders increasingly turn poor countries against their own poor citizens by forcing them to introduce "market-driven" standards like pre-paid water metres and bailing out on primary healthcare.

So how are voter registration and water metres related? Well, both are centre-piece plans of autonomous government bodies apparently acting independently, but which are really serving at the altar of the same god.

Those who make mealy-mouthed statements about democracy not being cheap, don't seem to understand even basic economics. It's been a constant refrain of those in charge of the Kampala show over the last 21 years that we now have regular elections; that they've empowered women, and the youth, and the disabled; even students.

We've instead seen a cancerous growth of a public administration cadre so parasitic that even the chairman of the smallest village committee is about to get a government salary! Indeed Uganda now seems to have more elections than jobs created. There was a referendum last year, a general election (for president and MPs) in February, then mayoral and district elections a few weeks later. Such 'democracy' is no doubt expensive as NRM apologists are keen-and rather ironically-to point. The sorry facts on the grounds, however, indicate that despite these sanctimonious exhortations, Uganda remains one of most unstable countries in the region, with a northern rebellion now in its 21st year.

The Museveni-run executive has almost monarchical powers and is largely unaccountable, parliament is your classic rubber-stamp, while the fear of God was put in the judiciary not too long ago when some of its members appeared to flex their legal muscles. Civil society is weak, disorganised and ineffective, with much of its class barely surviving on hand-outs from foreign NGOs. That is the democracy our friends keep talking up.

Meanwhile, the poorest Ugandans these politicians are so eager to represent in parliament would be happy with just three square meals a day, some medicine at the village dispensary and clean water.

They would probably cut a deal with the devil if he promised to take care of these immediate needs. It's they who will never see the link between NW&SC's spanking new pre-paid water metres (which make their access to clean water nigh impossible) and the incessant elections (whose total bill would probably ensure that every Ugandan has access to some clean water every day for a long time).

Like Marie Antoinette, our leaders continue chanting empty slogans even surely they don't believe in.

And one almost wishes for a return to the days of the French Revolution; and its guillotine.