Uganda’s Oromait is world’s youngest lawmaker

Proscovia Oromait, is world’s youngest lawmaker when she became a member of the Uganda’s parliament at 20.

In a report by The Independent, the mass communication undergraduate is also Africa’s youngest-ever MP who got into politics last year after the death of her 65-year old father, MP Michael Oromait. She campaigned in his stead in September, winning the by-election for his seat in Usuk County, with the backing of President Yoweri Museveni’s National Resistance Movement (NRM) party.

“What I said when I was younger was that in years to come, I’ll become the President,” she told The Independent, sitting behind her parliamentary desk.

“It’s just been my dream to become a leader of Uganda. And here I am, the youngest MP. And I’m so proud of what I am.”

According to the newspaper report, Ms Oromait’s age has caused a stir in a country where President Museveni, 68, has five septuagenarians in his Cabinet and the average age of ministers is 62.

Already the critics are lining up decry her lack of experience, no matter that she more accurately represents a nation where 78 per cent of the population is under 30.

Barnabas Tinkasimire, a senior ruling party MP and a friend of her late-father, dismisses Ms Oromait as “that baby”. “It was too early for her,” he said. “You cannot say she had any form of experience in legislation.”

But as her former head teacher, Everest Baguma, quipped during a recent visit by his star graduate to St Kalemba: “A young MP is better than an old sleeping one.”
And the government’s preference for experience may be due to the President’s vanity as much anything else: some have gossiped that he likes the company of elders as it makes him look and feel younger.

So far, it is her gender rather than her age which has caused to most problems for the MP. On the face of it, Uganda has a relatively good level of female representation in its politics.

There are 134 female MPs in Parliament, out of a total 385. Uganda has been ranked 15th in the world for female ministerial appointments, above many developed countries including the UK. An article in the constitution stipulates that there must be at least one woman MP for each district.

Yet many female parliamentarians complain that sexual harassment is rife. Some have been publicly degraded by authorities, and the country’s press does not seem to hold back from printing sleaze and scandalous rumour. The down-market Red Pepper tabloid recently told its readers that five “sex-hungry male MPs” were already “demanding sex” from Ms Oromait. “Some, above the ages of her late father, are relentlessly making sex advances to her despite the fact that she has on many occasions turned them down,” it claimed.

She wouldn’t be the first Ugandan MP to face harassment. In 2008, Nabilah Sempala, an opposition MP for Kampala district representing the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), had been trying to leave suggestion boxes at a busy market when she was arrested and had her skirt hoisted up by a male officer.

Ms Sempala said: “Behind the scenes, my colleagues who are in government come to me – fellow women – and say ‘Nabilah, please, we don’t want you to stay out late at night. Don’t go out in Kampala. Try not to be a target because one time they’ll rape you’.”

Source: The Independent