Parliament has no powers to suspend me – Namuganza
Persis Namuganza
What you need to know:
- The Bukono County legislator who was asked to step aside from her office, insists that Parliament acted like a mob against her as she was not given a fair hearing during the debate and adoption of the report about the controversial parceling out of Nakawa-Naguru land to individuals and companies.
The State Minister for Urban Planning and Development, Ms Persis Namuganza, has said that the Parliament has no powers to suspend her from Cabinet over the Nakawa-Naguru land saga.
Early this week, the Adhoc Committee report on Nakawa-Naguru land saga found Ms Namuganza culpable for abuse of office and overstepping her mandate when she directed the Uganda Land Commission (ULC) to allocate to some companies and individuals while purporting to be communicating the presidential directive which was non-existent.
The Bukono County legislator who was asked to step aside from her office, insists that Parliament acted like a mob against her as she was not given a fair hearing during the debate and adoption of the report about the controversial parceling out of Nakawa-Naguru land to individuals and companies.
“This report was misleading Members of Parliament, debating things which they don’t know about and finally passing resolutions which they actually don’t know. On this basis, first of all, I belong to the Executive and I know that they will have to forward the resolutions to the Executive for confirmation and I’m sure the executive is sober and it will not act the way they acted,” she told NTV Uganda Saturday evening.
She also insists that her directives to the ULC were enforcing the presidential directives and the decision to act on them was upon the commission. She says the presidential directives are sometimes verbal and cannot be questioned by anybody since the president has discretionary powers.
“If this report for example was saying I grabbed this land for myself or I used a certain company to grab this land for me, there I would accept. Even if the president doesn’t write, it is incumbent of the minister who has attended the meeting to communicate to relevant authorities what has transpired from the meeting for action,” Ms Namuganza.
The Attorney General Kiryowa Kiwanuka, however, said: “When a minister or any person receives a presidential directive, he or she must be able to determine what provisions of the law are available for it to be implemented. So you implement it in accordance with the law.”
Ms Namuganza also wonders why other ministers who formed the inter-ministerial committee that gave out most of the plots are not mentioned in the report.
“And they are the ones who decided these people to be paid. It is that committee that presented a report to the Cabinet and which the President okayed and they passed it. You wonder that those ones are not being talked about,” she said.
Under the parliamentary rules of procedure, the executive has six months to act on the recommendations of parliament. What now remains to be seen is whether the recommendations from the Nakawa-Naguru land investigations including asking Namuganza to step aside will be confirmed by the executive
