Prime
Kaka on verge of losing Angola job
Col Frank Kaka Bagyenda, former ISO Director. PHOTO | FILE
What you need to know:
- Sources in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs say no action has been taken to open the embassy in Angola ever since the President announced Uganda’s plan to have a mission in Luanda.
The position of Uganda’s ambassador to Angola has remained vacant six months after the former director general of the Internal Security Organisation (ISO), Col Kaka Bagyenda, who was appointed to the position, snubbed the parliamentary vetting process.
State minister for International Relations Henry Oryem Okello told Daily Monitor that Col Kaka cannot take up the position if he is not vetted by Parliament.
“He has not been vetted by Parliament, so he cannot take up that position. I don’t know whether he has accepted the appointment or not,” Mr Oryem said last week.
President Museveni will have to look for a replacement should the former ISO boss turn down the appointment.
Sources in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs say no action has been taken to open the embassy in Angola ever since the President announced Uganda’s plan to have a mission in Luanda.
Mr Oryem said he would consult the ministry’s permanent secretary, Mr Patrick Mugoya, who was out of the country, to find out whether Col Kaka was still interested in the job.
“Let me ask the permanent secretary for the update on whether he is still interested,” he said.
Parliament was supposed to vet Col Kaka in November for the job after he was fired by the President as the ISO Director General in October last year and replaced by Lt Col Charles Oluka.
Col Kaka was supposed to appear before the Parliament’s Appointments Committee with two newly named ambassadors, who have since been vetted and approved. The Parliament’s director of communications and public affairs, Ms Hellen Kawesa, said Col Kaka never informed the House why he was not able to come for vetting.
Uganda’s decision to open an embassy in Luanda was announced after Angola president João Manuel Lourenço mediated talks between Uganda and Rwanda to end the feud between the two countries.
BACKGROUND
Security sources had earlier told Daily Monitor that Col Kaka has turned down the appointment and has informed President Museveni that he wants to concentrate on his personal business of hotel and hospitality.
Before his appointment, Col Kaka was a businessman in Kalangala District where he had been running a hotel since early 1990s when he retired from the army. A week after Col Kaka was appointed ISO boss, President Museveni praised him for spying on Masindi barracks in 1984 which later led to a successful attack and capture of guns by the National Resistance Army during the guerrilla war.
