Aboneka Writes

The rationale of the decentralization policy was to ensure effective service delivery to the citizens at the very local unit. The implementation of this policy in Uganda has been going on for the last 20 years and it is sad that for all these years, service delivery is still poor. The Local governments are financed through three types of grants as per Article 193 of the Constitution; unconditional grants, conditional grants and equalization grants. The central Government has always transferred money to local governments and these have either come in late or are so tied. When a local government receives a conditional grant of which 97% decision making is a reserve of the Central government, the local government is only left with decision making of only 3% and you expect it to deliver effective services? The central government should at least transfer 38% to the Local government from the 3% to enhance service delivery. For-instance, If a local government receives money only worth to

The political temperatures are rising as we come close to the polls in February next year and it is no doubt that the poll candidates are already traversing the country in the name of consulting their voters. Whereas the political candidates are getting closer to their voters, extending frequent visits to constituencies, attending more public functions and struggling for any available platforms of expression of interests, the voters are happily waiting for the moment to hold them ransom all in the name of votes. Many voters pride in the poll days as it seems it is their most fetching business enterprise as well as time to express high level vengeance against those they believe have not delivered at all to their respective constituencies. It is also not new that votes have been and are being bought through various means ranging from dishing out money baskets to granting unwarranted favours among others. It is now fashionable that a vote is now a commodity of trade as it is easily

Following President Obama's visit to the Africa Union early this week, one of the salient issues he noted was the fact that African leaders want to stay in power for eternity and they have further repealed term limits from their constitution to cement this deal! Much as his comments are timely especially where we see most African states grappling with the term limits issue with others lifting it all in the name of people, African presidents will not deliver Obama's message home instead it is the Citizens of Africa. It is not in issue that term limits are core to democratic governance and as such, they are a must. In Uganda, the term limits were allegedly traded for five million shillings by the Parliament in 2005 who are peoples' representatives and the removal of the term limits was not in any way the peoples' view. To this end, therefore, various citizen organisations through their documents such as the Citizens' Manifesto, the Citizens Compact have demanded fo