3 parties get Deepening Democracy grants but FDC says it’s not enough

Jan 20, 10 10:08 PM

3 parties get Deepening Democracy grants
Tuesday, 19th January, 2010 E-mail article Print article

Deepening democracy programme a consortium of different donors has announced a series of grants to three political parties.

The grants have been extended to the Forum for democratic change, Uganda people’s congress and the People’s progress party.

They will be used for to grassroots mobilization a head of the 2011 general elections.

Announcing the grants in Kampala, programmes manager Deepening democracy in Uganda, Nicholas De Torrente says FDC will receive 400m, UPC, 157m and People’s Progressive Party 53m shillings.

He says the grants are aimed at building organizational capacity strengthen internal democracy, develop links with constituents and should not be used for campaigns.

The Netherlands institute for multiparty democracy will also receive 844m to facilitate an inclusive called the inter-party dialogue involving the six political parties represented in parliament.

Social Development Party SDP will also receive in kind assistance amounting to 36m towards organization of its national council meeting.

BUT THIS WAS WAFULA OGUTU’S RESPONSE TO THIS STORY:

No. Shs 400m is not an answer at all to our needs. It is too little apart from the fact that it is a conditional grant.We have huge demands.We need about Shs 30 billion at a minimum.

The PP&O Act restricts us from getting funding from foreign sources, to a maximumu of Shs4b in total and Shs 400m per year from one single source. Our best alternative for funding is you the members and supporters.

The government is however selective in applying that law. It is for us the opposition and not for them. During last elections, in 2006, they used up to Shs 52b but they have refused to send their accountability to the UEC as required by the law and tell Ugandans how and from where they raised that money. Indeed, they have not done so since they registered as a Party in 2003! If FDC missed even one year to send its audited accounts to UEC, it would be deregistered.

I just returned from Mbale to attend the nomination of our candidate Ambassador Jack Wamai Wamanga in the coming parliamentary bye-election. We had a huge rally after the nomination.It was a great day and I drove back this evening a very happy man. listening to the song “Alina Potential “ . Our main challenge is money to move us around.

Because of time and lack of logistics, it was not possible to operationalize the IPC Additional protocol for Budiope and Mbale bye-elections.We needed to have in place IPC Constituency electoral colleges to elect the candidates in IPC primaries.We have not set them up yet. But we are talking to each other on the best way forward.There is no failure at at all.

Wafula

About these ads

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
« Dec				Feb »
					1	2
3	4	5	6	7	8	9
10	11	12	13	14	15	16
17	18	19	20	21	22	23
24	25	26	27	28	29	30
31

Ugandans-At-Heart

Categories