Dear Mr. President,

Following your recent directive to the ministry of finance, planning and economic development to procure armored vehicles and assign sharp shooters for Members of parliament , i am inclined to ask you a couple of questions so i can understand where you are coming from.  see i have been trying to wrap my mind around what could be happening to you and your many Presidential advisers that you would even write such an absurd directive and have thus been pushed to write this letter. You see i do not understand how it is logically possible in your mind that procuring these cars will result into a solution for the security problems Uganda is facing right now.

For starters, did you stop to think about the financial implication of procuring these vehicles and sharp shooters?  For 456 MP’s, at least 500 million  will be needed to procure each vehicle, totaling up to UGX shs. 228 billion. We haven’t even considered the costs that will be incurred on allowances for drivers, servicing the cars and mileage allowance. My brothers and sisters are already overburdened by the fat allowances for the Members of Parliament , including basic pay, mileage, constituency facilitation, sitting allowances, social security benefits, medical insurance, free i Pads , travel allowances and monthly gratuity payment. All these expenses have been compounded into increased taxation for the Ugandan taxpayer.We are increasingly being over taxed to fund a lavish lifestyle for these Members of parliament who ironically exempted their own allowances from taxation. This, sir, is a continuation of impunity and gratuitous expenditure  that is putting more strain on an already beleaguered economy.

Forty and more women have been killed in the recent past and the MP’s you so seek to protect never raised their voice to condemn the brutal killings because they simply don’t care.  Par-adventure if we had  given armored vehicles and sharp shooters to these innocent women, they would still live. But no, they were left to suffer at the hands of iron bar hit men, panga-wielding squads and armed robbers  and lately stalkers!

It is absurd that you continue to undermine and inhibit institutional growth because the President should have no business poking his nose in the responsibilities of the parliamentary commission which is supposed to determine what Members of Parliament are entitled to. The nature of such implausible directives continuously undermines and weakens institutions, but you already knew that.

How does anyone in their right mind seek to protect 1% of the population neglecting the 99%  and call that a holistic approach to growth? What would happen if you invested in a professional and competent police force to protect all Ugandans other than the already privileged MP’s at the expense of the Ugandan Tax payer? How about if we channeled all this money to service delivery in social sectors like health, education and agriculture? I guess these are not your priorities at the moment since we seem to be having a lot of money to waste on luxurious lifestyles rather than improve livelihoods for our citizenry, so how do you sleep at night , if i may ask?

And the MP’s fr whom this proposal is being pushed, why not reject and rescind this discriminatory directive if we are truly  for the people, by the people, of the people? Why are we silent in the face of injustice?  How is getting you these vehicles going to translate into security for that woman selling tomatoes in Nakawa market?

We are already suffering with the useless lead cars that disrupt traffic every now and again and now you want to bring armored vehicles, that will make our already narrow roads more congested.  and Mr. President, thank you very much for expressing the state of fear in your circles. If you were not so afraid of the Citizens, you wouldn’t be making such irrational directives to protect both yourself and these Members of parliament from those you swore to protect.  I hope that you will rethink your directive and use your paid advisers to do their job before you make a fool of yourself again on national television over another national error!