BY JOHN TUGUME
The Razor Newspaper
http://www.razor.ug/news/national/clergy-want-budget-that-favours-people/
June  2011

Archbishop Orombi and other clergy at a recent function in Rukungiri (PPU PHOTO)

The government should ensure that low income earners in the country are the greatest beneficiaries when the national budget is read today, Anglican Archbishop Henry Luke Orombi has said.

Orombi, who took over as the new chairman of the Uganda Joint Christian Council on Wednesday last week, said: “The budget should favour the common man who has suffered most during this critical time of high fuel prices.”

His call comes a few days before new Finance Minister Maria Kiwanuka presents her maiden budget to Parliament. Orombi took over leadership from Metropolitan Jonah Lwanga as the leader of the ecumenical body that brings together Roman Catholics, Anglicans and the Orthodox Church in Uganda.

“The family is the basic unit of society; hence it deserves special economic protection. Many families live in abject poverty. As a result they are not in a position to access basic social services, including education and medical services,” he said.

During their annual meeting in Kampala, the clerics said they would reach out to different political leaders with a message of “love, justice, peace and reconciliation”.

Meanwhile, UJCC regretted the loss of lives during the walk-to-work demos, underscoring the importance of respecting human rights and upholding the rule of law.

“We call upon the government to ensure respect for the sanctity of life,” Orombi said on behalf of UJCC. The clerics also denounced circumcision as the new measure to fight HIV/Aids. “If we are going to fear HIV/Aids, we need to be morally upright. Married people should remain faithful. Abstinence is the only solution to the spread of Aids,” Orombi said.

He said there was a need for all citizens to combat the spread of HIV/Aids adding: “Aids, including lack of anti-retroviral drugs, is tearing apart many families”.

Orombi appealed to the youth to desist from sexual intercourse if they were to reap from their investment in education. “We all know sex is a gift from God. And we know there is fire burning inside you to let it out. But inside you, there is that extinguisher that should enable you to cool that sexual fire,” he said.

FOOTNOTE TO THIS STORY: It has been the accusation of Episcopal and some European Anglican church leaders that Global South Anglican leaders are socially irrelevant. This was a charge often made by Washington Bishop John Chane. It is a lie. These Anglican leaders are as concerned for the souls of their people as they are for their bodily welfare.

By Tim Montgomerie
Follow Tim on Twitter.

I travelled to Easterhouse with Iain Duncan Smith on that eventful wet, grey day, nearly ten years ago, in which he dedicated his political life to fighting poverty. In literally hundreds of visits before that day* and many since I saw the reality of poverty in Britain today. Children who’ve never seen their father. Schools that fail to teach basic reading skills. Families where a parent has never worked. Communities encircled by loan sharks. Young lives ruined by drug addiction before they’ve even reached adulthood. Pensioners imprisoned in their homes by fear of crime.

That was the reality for millions of Britons at the end of the Labour years. The party that styles itself as the party of the poor had created a welfare system that discouraged couples from living together and which penalised work. It presided over an education system that saw millions of kids leave school without the skills necessary to compete for jobs that, in any case, Labour gave to immigrants from abroad.

Labour spent more money on fighting poverty than any government in history. It did so at a time when the British economy was at its strongest. But what happened to the most extreme forms of poverty and inequality? Things got worse.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, has launched a remarkable attack on the coalition government, warning that it is committing the country to “radical, long-term policies for which no one voted”. In a leading article for this week’s New Statesman, which he has guest-edited, Williams says that the “anger and anxiety” felt by voters is a result of the government’s failure to expose its policies to “proper public argument”.

His political intervention is the most significant by a church figure since Faith In The City, an excoriating critique of the Thatcher government, was published in 1985 by the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie.

With particular reference to the government’s health and education reforms, Williams says that the government’s approach has created “bafflement and indignation” among the public.

“With remarkable speed, we are being committed to radical, long-term policies for which no one voted,” he writes. “At the very least, there is an understandable anxiety about what democracy means in such a context.”

Before the election, David Cameron promised to stop the “top down reorganisations” of the NHS but later embarked on the biggest reforms to the health service since its creation

In reference to Michael Gove’s education reforms, the Archbishop writes: “At the very least, there is an understandable anxiety about what democracy means in such a context. Not many people want government by plebiscite, certainly. But, for example, the comprehensive reworking of the Education Act 1944 that is now going forward might well be regarded as a proper matter for open probing in the context of election debates.” Gove’s free school reforms were pushed through Parliament with a haste usually reserved for emergency anti-terrorist powers.

He warns: “Government badly needs to hear just how much plain fear there is around such questions at present.”

Williams also calls into question Cameron’s “big society” agenda, a phrase he describes as “painfully stale”. He writes that the project is viewed with “widespread suspicion” as an “opportunistic” cover for spending cuts, adding that it is not acceptable for ministers to blame Labour for Britain’s economic and social problems.

In an implicit criticism of The Chancellor, George Osborne, Williams says: “It isn’t enough to respond with what sounds like a mixture of, “This is the last government’s legacy,” and, “We’d like to do more, but just wait until the economy recovers a bit.”

The Archbishop also launches a sustained attack on the government’s welfare reforms, complaining of a “quiet resurgence of the seductive language of “deserving” and “undeserving” poor.” In comments directed at the Work and Pensions Secretary, Iain Duncan Smith, Williams criticises the “steady pressure to increase what look like punitive responses to alleged abuses of the system.”

In his piece, Williams says that his aim is to stimulate “a livelier debate” and to challenge the left to develop its own “big idea” as an alternative to the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition.

Read the full version of Rowan Williams’s leading article.