Opposition to present alternative national budget

Mpuuga made this known to the public on his official twitter account on Thursday morning.

“On March 31st, we'll host political leaders, eminent persons, the civil society and religious leaders among others, to the Alternative Budget Speech, at Parliament. We hope to have it streamed live for the wider public to follow,” he twitted.

Last year, Mpuuga, who was speaking during a three-day opposition retreat in Entebbe, revealed that the opposition was to move away from the old practice of responding to the Government’s proposals to developing a completely different alternative national budget.

Mpuuga explained that the new approach is in line with their mandate to keep the Government in check.

“It is our duty to deeply study the prepositions of the Government and put some level of imagination and produce alternatives. The mandate is to produce alternatives but not to support, not to clarify and not in any way recommend or patch up government policies,” Mpuuga said.

“We are not supposed to clean up their mess… our job is to offer citizens a cleaner and better alternative,” he added.

He said the new approach has been conceived after realising that the Government mostly presents to Parliament recycled budget proposals.

“We remember the embarrassment Parliament suffered last Financial Year when ministers presented the same documents from the previous year with the only change being the financial year. The rest was the same including the preamble,” Mpuuga said.