Why is Parliament inaccessible? I am a 19-year-old German student of Political and Social Sciences, currently completing an internship at a civil society organization in Kampala. On Tuesday last week, I intended to attend the debate concerning the contested Public Order Management Bill (POMB) with two of my Ugandan colleagues. The main reason for me to go to Parliament was my personal interest in seeing the symbol of Ugandan democracy – the Parliament. To summarise my experience in one sentence: I was shocked. Parliament, which is supposed to be an open institution that represents the voices of the Ugandan People, seemed to me rather like a highly secured military station. The first hindrance we met was at the entrance of the parking zone. The guards told us to wait without giving any particular reason. After some time and a second security control, we managed to get into the building. There, we were directly put in a long queue of people who were waiting to attend the debate. When it was finally our turn, a security man told us that before going to the queue, where we had spent about 20 minutes, we should have gone to the public relations office to register. After another 30 minutes, we finally got back to the original queue with our registration documents. It looked like if we were finally getting in, when the next problem occurred: The guards wouldn’t believe that the people standing in front of them were in fact the same people who had been signing the documents at the public relations office earlier. My colleagues tried to display their Ugandan passports as proof but they were not allowed to get in. A copy of my German passport on the contrary allowed me to get in. How, then, is it possible that a foreign citizen can easily gain access to Uganda’s Parliament yet it is a hurdle for a Ugandan citizen? Nikolaus Hastreiter
Posted on: Sun, 11 Aug 2013 16:15:26 +0000
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