MPs from the opposition and the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) came to blows. More than 24 MPs have been suspended, including Ronald Kibuule who allegedly entered the House with a gun.

This time, 12 deputies were suspended. An MP, Francis Zaake, from Mityana Municipality (NUP), ended up being loaded into an ambulance and rushed to Nsambya Hospital for emergency medical treatment.

Photos later surfaced of him in a hospital bed, hooked up to all sorts of machines that wouldn’t be out of place in an intensive care unit. Next to him was the leader of the opposition in Parliament, Joel Ssenyonyi.
The bill was passed. It had to happen. The numbers say it. But we’ll talk about that later.

News of the fight and subsequent passage of the bill brought my colleagues and I in Maggwa, Kasiiso and Mukono districts to talk with coffee farmers that our legislators say they are fighting for.

Listening to farmers, one would assume that their views on the streamlining of the Uganda Coffee Development Authority (UCDA) might come across as an ill-prepared soup of conspiracy theories, fear and uncertainty.

They have a healthy distrust of the government and the opposition.
They do not know where to turn for advice on this and many other issues of national importance.

There is a void at the base of our society that no theater can fill.
Some of these people said they hadn’t seen their MPs since they won the election and hadn’t seen the president in 11 years.

They remember the days when the president would visit their homes, hold public rallies and give some of them the opportunity to speak to him directly.

Their current news source, they say, is two radio stations where they receive opinions from presenters. The brutalization of society is almost complete.

Meanwhile, their MPs are in Kampala, collecting constituency allowances and spending very little of that parliamentary money on actual parliamentary work.

They seem to have petty-bourgeois and bourgeois illusions and put them above their political goals and their duty to the people.

It should therefore come as no surprise to anyone that a culture of debate at the highest level of the legislative chambers has been replaced by a pugilistic culture.

It would help our society if some of the energy and resources spent on this public spectacle were instead devoted to thinking about the ways in which a parliamentary minority can influence legislation. This is not something foreign to our republic.

Writer Anthony Natif is a team leader at Public Square. @Tony Native