Alliance for National Transformation (ANT)’s national coordinator Alice Alaso (right) and party
president Maj Gen Mugisha Muntu (left) appear before the Legal and Parliamentary Affairs committee in Parliament, Kampala, on October 10, 2024. PHOTO/DAVID LUBOWA
The Bill mainly wants Opposition leaning MPs to elect the Leader of Opposition (LoP).
Opposition political parties have asked Parliament to trash the Administration of Parliament (Amendment) Bill, 2024 that chiefly seeks to have the Leader of Opposition in Parliament (LoP) elected.
The Bill crafted by the Democratic Party’s Richard Lumu (Mityana South) also seeks to have the shadow cabinet members vetted before clearance and to also create provisions under which the LoP can be removed from office.
In separate submissions made to Parliament’s Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee, three Opposition parties unanimously rejected the Bill in its entirety, reasoning that the said legislation, if passed in its current form, would frustrate the growth of democracy in Uganda.
The Alliance of National Transformation (ANT), Uganda Peoples Congress (UPC), and the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) were all represented by their top leaders on the matter.
In the first interaction with the committee, the national coordinator of the ANT, Ms Alice Alaso, stated that the said draft law is counterproductive on Uganda’s democratic path.
“We sense that many stakeholders and political parties do not support this proposed amendment, we have followed the discussion in the media and therefore we conclude that if this is enacted, it is counterproductive. We believe it will lead to slow and eventual erosion of the democratic space, the little that we have will also be eaten up by this amendment," Ms Alaso told the committee.
In a rejoinder, ANT’s president Gen Mugisha Muntu said: “This Bill should not be passed” because “it is a recipe for disaster for this country”.
“We are grappling with so many challenges, the environment isn’t conducive for party building already. Don’t add other complex situations within what is already a difficult situation,” he said, adding: “Be very careful. At ANT, we believe that the stability of this country can only happen when there are strong institutions, the parties are the vehicles of governance, as long as we operate within the Constitution, you aren’t going to run this country, outside the parties.”
In his submission, the Secretary General of the Uganda People’s Congress (UPC), Mr Fred Ebil, rallied colleagues in the Opposition to focus on pushing for electoral reforms that would enable the country to realise ‘free and fair’ elections.
“We are here to plead with you, like we told [Mr] Lumu, that much as he has these issues that he has raised, with the management and relations with the office of the Leader of Opposition, we feel that having a free and fair election which is urgent, which is crucial, we need to have these amendments done,” Mr Ebil said.
He added: “It is our request and humble appeal that we need to prioritise what comes first and we think, the election of 2026 is a priority to us. We think the other things can be addressed administratively.”
Having noted that with concern that the majority of the submissions on matter were against the said Bill, MP Mr Jonathan Odur (Erute South) and Jonathan Ebwalu (Soroti West) wondered whether or not Mr Lumu had consulted the Opposition parties before presenting the Bill to Parliament.
In response, the FDC party president, Mr Patrick Oboi Amuriat, informed the MPs that they rejected attempts to be consulted since the mover of the Bill, Mr Lumu only contacted them after the proposals had already been gazetted.
The unanimous position from the aforementioned political parties is also shared by officials from the Law Development Centre (LDC) who appeared before the same committee last week.
“In my view, the party with the majority in leadership should take the day,” The LDC head of department of law reporting, research and law reform, Mr Paul Mukiibi, told the committee.
He added: “Otherwise we may have a situation where LoP cannot perform his or her roles effectively. Because if we go into this system of casting votes, the sabotage I talked about earlier, the political influence can result in having the LoP who is not Opposition in spirit and in terms of executing the duties as per the law, it becomes completely hard.”
There was no conclusive position given by the committee on the matter with the chairperson of the committee Mr Stephen Bakka Mugabi (NRM, Bukooli County) indicating that other political parties are yet to make submissions on the same.
