Presidential age limit battle shifts to House committee

The battle over the removal of presidential age limits has now shifted to the Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee, with rival groups of MPs back to the drawing board to devise strategies of winning this key stage.
After weeks of confrontations, Igara West MP Raphael Magyezi this week tabled the Bill for First Reading and the Speaker Rebbecca Kadaga referred it to the Committee on Legal and Parliamentary Affairs for scrutiny.
The committee is expected to conduct hearings and consultations within 45 days and file a report to the whole Parliament.
Mr Jacob Oboth-Oboth, the MP for West Budama South, is charged with chairing the Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Committee during this task.
He did not honour our repeated attempts to talk to him on the matter.
But to put Mr Oboth-Oboth’s task in perspective, it is important to look at what befell Deputy Speaker of Parliament Jacob Oulanyah when he was in charge of the committee in 2005 when term limits for the presidency were removed.
Mr Oulanyah, then an opposition-leaning legislator, was berated by his colleagues, accusing him of selling out to enable the lifting of the term limits and enable President Museveni to run again in 2006.
Mr Oulanyah subsequently lost his parliamentary seat in 2006, and would only bounce back in 2011 and after changing sides and joining NRM.
Mr Oboth-Oboth was elected on the independent ticket but got the nod of Government Chief Whip Ruth Nankabirwa to chair the committee, and the spotlight will inevitably shift towards him once the hearings begin.
Out of the 13 NRM members on the 23-man committee, three have voiced disapproval against the proposal to remove the age limit on the presidency, which would allow President Museveni a chance to run again in 2021.
The three NRM dissenters on the committee - Abbas Agaba [Kitagwenda County], Monicah Amoding [Kumi District] and Gafabusa Muhumuza [Bwamba County], told Sunday Monitor they oppose the move to amend Article 102(b) and scrap the 75-year cap on presidential age limits.
Kyaka South MP Jackson Kafuuzi, who seconded the Bill for First Reading, will be disqualified from voting on the Bill, leaving the NRM with nine MPs who say they will make their decisions known after consultations.
Eight of the nine NRM MPs interviewed said they will make their positions on the contentious proposal known after holding consultations in their constituencies.
Bufumbira South MP Sam Bitangaro is the only NRM MP who was not interviewed because he did not pick our repeated phone calls.
Apart from Mr Oboth-Oboth, the committee has five other Independents, two FDC MPs and two DP MPs.
The rules stipulate that decisions of committee can be reached by voting if members fail to build consensus.
The rules give parties powers to withdraw members from committees and allocate them to others, but Ms Nankabirwa on Friday made a U-turn when asked about threats she made at a press briefing on Wednesday that she would reshuffle NRM members on the committee.
She told Sunday Monitor that NRM members on the committee were bound by decisions of their caucus and will be expected to follow the party line and vote in support of the removal of presidential age limits.
Ms Nankabirwa declined to be drawn on how the NRM will handle its MPs, who have publicly voiced opposition to the Bill, but an MP familiar with the manoeuvring on the ruling party’s side insisted that a reshuffle of the committee members is on the cards.
The committee can have a maximum of 30 members with representation based on the numerical strength of the parties and Independents.
Opposition Chief Whip Ibrahim Ssemujju Nganda was also non-committal on how MPs opposed to amending Article 102(b) will handle this critical committee stage, saying a strategy would be adopted.
“At the beginning, we were fighting with NRM MPs who were chest-thumping that they have the numbers and we said we knew how to deal with them and we dealt with them. As to what we will do because we are no longer dealing with the numbers but with Museveni’s guards and soldiers, the details will be resolved in a couple of meetings and consultations,” Mr Ssemujju said.
The side that loses the battle in the committee can, however, resume hostilities on the floor as the rules allow members to make amendments on Bills when tabled for Second Reading.