Is age really “just a number”? In Uganda, many people in public life would reply, “Yes, it is.” Consider this: According to a report in the Independent magazine a few weeks ago, the average age of the country’s 28-member Cabinet is 62.

Twenty ministers and several permanent secretaries are at the mandatory retirement age of 60. Five ministers are officially 70 and above. Until very recently, several ambassadors were also septuagenarians.

This gerontocracy cannot be accidental. Age in Uganda is therefore not just a number; it is a serious prerequisite for securing certain types of jobs.

The mantra “age is just a number” has been bandied about quite a bit in Uganda in recent weeks, in reaction to the earth-shaking election to parliament of a 19-year-old who only recently sat her high school examinations.

Proscovia Alengot, who trounced eight other candidates, was the ruling party candidate in a by-election staged to replace her late father, Michael Oromait, former MP of Usuk County, who died suddenly of acute hypertension in July this year.

There has been a bit of a kerfuffle within the ruling National Resistance Movement as to whether she should have been the party’s official candidate or whether it should have been a mature and experienced person.

Public discussion has mirrored the intra-NRM controversy, with some people welcoming her election and celebrating it as a triumph for the country’s youth, who make up more than 50 per cent of the population.

Others have slammed it as evidence of the deterioration in the quality of people winning parliamentary seats since President Yoweri Museveni seized power 27 years ago.

There are solid arguments on both sides.

The Museveni government is regularly criticised for being sloppy, attributed by observers to sloth and lack of imagination within a Cabinet dominated by people, some of whom were already ministers and public figures in Idi Amin’s government when the new MP’s late father was still in primary school. 

Consequently, NRM supporters desperate for a generational change see the election of young people to parliament as an absolute necessity.

While they generally agree with the view that a continuous injection of fresh blood into the legislature is important, critics of the NRM say it shouldn’t have chosen someone who will “need someone to babysit her before she can do anything on her own.”

In many ways, the choice of Ms Alengot points to the NRM’s loss of belief in itself as a political organisation with the capacity to inspire.

After humiliating defeats by opposition parties in seven out of nine by-elections held since President Museveni was declared winner of the 2011 general election, it was not prepared to risk another one by nominating any other candidate.

After he died, it transpired that Mr Oromait had been a good Member of Parliament.

Good MPs in Uganda are not necessarily those who excel at questioning the government’s policies or initiatives or even championing new and innovative legislation.

Rather, they are those who share their money with their constituents and also lobby the government, donor agencies and NGOs to finance the construction or repair of the odd health unit, road, or school building in their constituency.

The government of Uganda does not have coherent plans for supplying such public goods evenly across the country.

MPs therefore have to lobby hard for their constituents to get any. If that fails, they must appeal to good Samaritans. Michael Oromait was one such MP. Therefore getting his daughter to stand on the ruling party ticket was the one sure way of winning the seat.

Ugandans have a well-established record of electing children of dead MPs to replace their parents. Therefore in fronting Ms Alengot, NRM knew what it was doing. And so it came to pass that she won resoundingly. 

A baffled but sympathetic fellow MP has wondered how she will cope “if mature people like us still find it difficult to analyse policies and legislate for the country.”

Also, questions continue to be asked about the implications of her age for her ability to manage. On the latter, she is emphatic: “It is not age that matters”.

As for her priorities, they are neither policies nor legislation: “My focus is to work on roads, fight cattle rustling and elevate education standards”.

Age aside, she sounds like a “good MP” in the making. 

Frederick Golooba-Mutebi is a Kampala- and Kigali-based researcher and writer on politics and public affairs. E-mail: [email protected]