MPs, enjoy your monster rides as we suffer

Some of us engage with the citizens and we really feel the pain they get every time they hear such issues of people getting millions of money just to put to waste. If MPs managed to have cars during their campaigns, can they really fail to have transport now that they are receiving over Shs22 million as salary and allowances per month? This gesture of buying members of parliament cars has really taken us back to the times of class societies. We are now being divided into classes of the important, (the importanter) and the locals where we; who are not in parliament, belong. Those who have been in parliament many times have received the Shs200 million during every term ehhh. We can now see that people battle to be in that House to make their lives better, not better the lives of their voters.

Now that they have received the Shs200 million, they will soon table a motion to increase their allowances and salaries and this cuts across the ruling party and the opposition. The way these opposition members can make noise on radio and television shows you may even think they cannot accept such sums of money. They keep claiming to be saints and better leaders who care about their voters. For the People Power members, the struggle was theirs, not for the people they kept telling to misbehave on their behalf.

According to my little understanding, if a person is chosen to lead the people, it is his/her responsibility to take care of the interest of each of the people who vote him or her into the power. For this to happen, a leader must first be able to identify the common good, to have a grasp of what is acceptable to all, to have an inclusive vision.

This requires vast capacity to listen to others, to learn from them, to have the intellectual ability to critically examine and evaluate what everyone wants and needs, and then put them all together. But our members of parliament do the opposite. In fact they even never call rallies to inquire from us about anything yet when they wanted our support, they could organise public address systems to move around villages mobilising for support.

But really why do we allow our leaders to practice these funny things on us and steal the little we have through living above their means yet we have a lot we could do with such amounts of money?

Majority of Ugandans; especially in the opposition, are just waking up now to the realisation that their leaders are more concerned with their own interests of amassing wealth than minding about the promises they made during campaigns.

It is very true that God intends for everyone to thrive economically. He wants us to find provision for our daily life. He also desires for us to enjoy the wealth of his generosity. But we should at least always remember to look at priorities other than only minding about things that don’t matter a lot. Anyway, as the President strives to make sure we get enough vaccines for every Ugandan to be vaccinated, let our members of Parliament cruise around in their monster Shs200 million rides and attend burials of their unvaccinated voters who die of COVID-19., God is watching you.

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Michael Woira is a Patriotic Ugandan