Talk in Kampala is that Ugandan legislators have pulled off yet another financial stroke, getting their debts paid off from an unclear source.

It is believed that cash payments of Ush110 million to Ush150 million ($40,000 to $60,000) are being disbursed to the Members of Parliament, who number up to 380.

The background to this is that most of the honourable members are perpetually broke. Although they are among the highest paid public servants in Uganda, they simply cannot make ends meet.

While most public servants like teachers, junior civil servants and policemen get about $100 a month, an MP earns $8,000 a month. However, the MPs claim that most of their salary is spent on their voters for whom they pay funeral and wedding expenses as well as school fees for children. It sounds warped but the excuse is so repetitively given it is now accepted as fact in Uganda.

It is believed the MPs start taking loans during the campaigns in order to bribe voters and buy votes, continue taking loans after being elected and live under constant threat of being arrested by moneylenders’ agents.

It may sound bizarre but an average Ugandan MP is a frightened man or woman, living at the prison doorstep all the time. And so when they get audience with the president, they plead with him to help them pay off their debts, blaming the demanding voters for their financial woes.

Because most of their salary is gobbled up by loan sharks, MPs are said to pick up any money that is offered to them before thinking of the conditions and implications of accepting the “free cash.” The money usually comes during “interesting times.”

On the eve of lifting the constitutional presidential term limits in 2005, MPs received $3,000 each to go and consult their constituents.  Late 2010 and early 2011 on the eve of the last election, the MPs got $8,000 each to go and consult over government agricultural programmes. After the elections, each MP got over $40,000 to buy a car.

Recently, ruling party MPs got various sums to go and consult over a caucus resolution to front a single candidate for the 2016 election. And now comes the whopping $40,000 to $60,000, depending on one’s level of indebtedness.

It does not matter what one’s political camp is; opposition leaders are accusing their MPs of being among the first to get the money. Ministers have denied that the government is the source of the money. It is as if some divine force were raining cash in the MPs’ pockets.

Obviously giving free money will never solve MPs’ problems. The more they get the more they demand, and they get what they want. And so more people are led to believe that politics is the route to free money, and so are ready to do anything to get elected to parliament.

This means borrowing money to buy votes, in the hope of recouping the money and paying off the debts once elected. So the incumbents who do not want to be unseated also borrow more to beat off the new competition.

And the money demands of the political class thus spiral out of control. Someone will have to teach the basic use of money to Ugandan legislators; it is as simple as that.

Joachim Buwembo is a Knight International Fellow for development journalism. E-mail: [email protected]