4 October 2008
opinion
Parliament should stop public relations gimmick and look into serious issues that affect the elderly than just giving them extra seats in the House.
Sad to say that as a country we have failed to prioritise our needs. What agenda are these senior citizens going to champion at this time if the socio-economic conditions of the youth, workers, disabled, army and women have not tangibly improved their representation notwithstanding?
How can we guarantee that another interest group like tomato vendors, comedians, sex workers, and night dancers will not jump from the wood works tomorrow and arm-twist the political elite in town for representation in the national legislature ?
As a country we should be seriously thinking of how to reduce expenditure on public administration and parliament is one of them. The saved resources should then be channelled to other crucial and worthwhile areas like health, education and wealth creation.
Parliament should expedite how these senior citizens should get their well deserved pensions in time, because as a country we owe them everything.
Imagine if during their time, they had cut down all forests, sold all public land and property and clambered for political offices, who would have built the country called Uganda with its values, education, and the entire infrastructure, now being torn down in pursuit of political careerism.
As a country we should be thinking of how best to position our children for the challenges of globalisation, where the globe has been reduced to a small village with intense competition for limited resources.
As a country of conscious people we should work to protect farmers from being cheated by middlemen and provide them with markets, infrastructure, affordable credit facilities.
Politicians have graduated to an absurd level of populism and self aggrandisement that their relevance now has a shade of blackmail and bigotry. Some of them are a reflection of a peasant minded citizenry on rampage to escape political orphanage they suffered at birth.
We should move away from this obsession about political clientelism and accept that there are many other ways people can advance their socio-economic status other than being represented in parliament.
It only needs pragmatic planning on the side of government, zero tolerance to vices like corruption, nepotism and self aggrandisement that our country can move forward.
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