Speaker Anita Among chairs a plenary session at Parliament on April 24. PHOTO/DAVID LUBOWA
During the 2024 State of the Nation Address (SONA) in June, Parliament Speaker Anita Among took great delight in the 11th Parliament processing 47 bills and 42 resolutions in the 87 sitting convened during its third year. She also made known plans to hold rotational regional sittings across all four corners of the country.
Whereas the first regional sitting has been scheduled to take place at the Kaunda grounds in Gulu City from August 29 to 30, it remains to be seen whether the red carpet will be rolled out as initially expected. This as the tentacles of protests against perceived acts of corruption in the House gain in their frequency and amplitude countrywide. Speaker Among has particularly come in for a lot of flak from critics.
It can be said that Ms Among had her work cut out when she assumed the reins of the speakership following the death of Jacob Oulanyah in March 2022. Parliament has lurched from one scandal to another on her watch, leaving many to wonder what might have been had Oulanyah not lost a brief battle to cancer barely a year into his speakership.
Lwemiyaga County MP Theodore Ssekikubo and his Arua Central Division counterpart Jackson Atima during a press conference at Parliament on July 25, 2024. PHOTO/DAVID LUBOWA.
On Thursday, Mr Theodore Ssekikubo, the Lwemiyaga County lawmaker, secured the 177 signatures needed for a censure motion to see the light of the day in the House. The motion is targeting four parliamentary commissioners deemed to have illegally awarded themselves Shs1.7 billion during a meeting that was chaired by Speaker Among. The backbench commissioners in question include Mr Mathias Mpuuga, the immediate past Leader of Opposition in Parliament (LoP); Ms Esther Afoyochan; Mr Solomon Silwany; and Ms Prossy Akampurira. It is the latest scandal that captures the spectacular opulence of the 11th Parliament.
On a lighter, if no less economically devastating, note, Mr Ssekikubo has had to crisscross the country to get the 177 signatures from the 529-lawmaker-strong House. The 177th signature was received from Jackson Atima, the Arua Central Division lawmaker, on a day—Thursday—when youth in his constituency planned to stage a march against acts of corruption believed to be rampant in the House.
The commissioners accused of sharing Shs1.7b (L-R): Mathias Mpuuga (Nyendo – Mukungwe MP), Prossy Mbabazi Akampurira (Rubanda Woman MP), Esther Afoyochan (Zombo Woman MP) and Solomon Silwanyi (Bukooli Central MP). PHOTOS/ FILE/ COURTESY
In an interview with this publication back in May, Mr Ssekikubo stopped short of saying, insofar as the travails of the 11th Parliament were concerned, the buck stops with Speaker Among.
“[Parliament has become a personal property] because [it] has been emasculated in the sense that individual and personal favours from the Speaker to an individual have become institutionalised as the modus operandi,” he said, adding, “Look at it this way, we had the late Jacob Oulanyah, who after less than a year he passed on, this country moved on. So members must extricate themselves from that captivity to think that without Hon Anita Among, there will be no Parliament.”
In Museveni’s good graces
Yet, despite all of this, Ms Among appears to have the backing of President Museveni. When critics took to social media to wage a fierce war against the House during the so-called Parliament Exhibition, Mr Museveni sprung to the rescue of the Speaker. The exhibition shone a spotlight on a litany of financial abuses at the House, with Ms Among identified as the primal culprit.
The President held that the criticism was the handiwork of “real traitors” who he added were “working for bad foreigners” to attack Parliament following the passing of an anti-gay law.
“The mere problem they have, it is the traitors who are working for foreigners. Those are real traitors. They are not mistake makers, they are not learners which need advice, they are outright traitors,” Mr Museveni said after commissioning the Speaker’s Bukedea Teaching Hospital and Bukedea College of Health Sciences in Bukedea District. “First of all, they are working for foreigners. Moreover working for bad type of foreigners; homosexuals, imperialists who want Africa to be in slavery again.”
President Museveni (L) holds a shield and spear as Speaker of Parliament Anita Among (R) reacts during commissioning of her Bukedea Teaching Hospital and Bukedea College of Health Sciences on March 23, 2024. PHOTO/ FILE
Mr Museveni read from the same template on Thursday while responding to this week’s anti-graft protests.
“[…] the planners of these demonstrations wanted to do very bad things. The charge by the Police of “idle and disorderly”, I suspect, was used because the deployed personnel did not have all the information. This was a high-quality, intelligence-led operation. I have most of the information,” he disclosed in a written statement.
Emboldened
With such backing, real or imagined, Speaker Among keeps being emboldened to, one observer noted, “chart her own path.” She did just that in June when the National Unity Platform party moved to unseat Mr Abed Bwanika and Ms Joyce Bagala as chairperson and vice chairperson of the Government Assurances Committee.
The leading Opposition party in the House had named Mr Joseph Ssewungu and Ms Ethel Betty Naluyima as replacements of Mr Bwanika and Ms Bagala. Both Mr Bwanika and Ms Bagala are bosom buddies of Mr Mpuuga who worked up a good working chemistry with Speaker Among during his spell as the LoP.
“The Committee of Government Assurances has not been meeting and we think that is a very serious committee that has got to be active. They rarely meet and our thinking as the persons in charge of these committees, we want these committees to be active,” LoP Joel Ssenyonyi told Parliament on June 19.
He added: “We want the Committee to be active like the others, so using the powers given to us through the [Parliament’s] rules [of Procedure], that is why we [in the office of the opposition] are redesignating.”
Previously, Speaker Among ordered the shelving of a report by the Committee on Commissions, Statutory Authorities, and State Enterprises (Cosase) following an inquest into financial misappropriations by Uganda’s flag carrier.
The Leader of the Opposition in Parliament (LoP), Joel Ssenyonyi. PHOTO/ FILE
Ms Among said her decision was informed by the fact that the final report had been leaked. Mr Ssenyonyi, who was the Cosase chairperson at the time, took exception to the decision.
