My journey to Cabinet has been long — Mao

Newly-appointed Justice and Constitutional Affairs minister Norbert Mao has revealed that this was not the first time he was approached for a ministerial position.

Without delving into details, the Democratic Party (DP) president general said this time, he grabbed the opportunity without hesitation.

“My journey to Cabinet has been long, but this time, it has taken one year, many times, the journey never started because this is not the first time to be offered a position in Cabinet. But this time, it was serious right from June last year,” Mr Mao said last Friday as he took charge of the Justice ministry in Kampala.

He likened his acceptance to the animal farm, where he said each animal demanded for its own tail apart from the frog that laid back knowing its uncle who was the king.

“In the animal kingdom, the king decided that animals will look better if they had tails, so the king assembled lots of tails and he would lift one tail, and a giraffe could say, I love that one, and it’s given that tail, the lions got long ones, the monkeys got even longer ones. The king kept lifting but now, the king had a nephew, the frog, but the frog was sitting back and saying, my uncle will definitely see me, he will reserve a tail for me for sure, there is no way my uncle can fail to reserve a tail for me,” he said.

Adding: “Eventually the tails were finished and now you can see the shape in which the frog is in. No tail. So this time, and you need to know this, we were very proactive as DP, and also asked for our tail, those who want to go around without tails, I have to end here because this is not a political rally.”

Mr Mao revealed that the DP secretary general and that of the ruling NRM, would meet this week to commence the actual implementation of the cooperation agreement that was signed more than a week ago.

“There are plans that we negotiated very carefully with President Museveni, who is also the chairman of the ruling party. These plans are not new, like I said the other day on TV, the role of championing some of these things has been wandering around looking for a champion, we just stepped forward and found a partnership in President Museveni and this is the address,” Mr Mao said.

Speaking at the handover ceremony, Public Service Minister Wilson Mukasa Muruli, who had also been the acting minister for the same Justice ministry for more than six months, urged Mr Mao to fast-track the setting up of the constitutional review commission.

Minister Muruli justified the fast-tracking, citing the few remaining years to the next General Election in 2026.

“The first year is already gone,  and yet we still need to establish the constitutional review commission. Everyone wants it, including Parliament. We are running out of time since we have like two years left of 2023 and 2024. In 2025, emphasis might shift to some key issues from the commission’s recommendations that need urgent attention,” he said.

Mr Mao promised to work on setting up the commission as one of his priorities.
“I am now a domestic fox, the foxes are out there, looking at how I am treated, if my good ideas that are in this document are not treated well, then the foxes that are on the anthills all around, will move even farther away from the domestic environment. I believe that will not be the case. I believe we shall bring many of the issues that we have been quarrelling about to the table,” he said.