After she adjourned Parliament indefinitely on January 10 in protest at a court order which blocked debate on the presidential cash award to 42 public officials, Speaker Rebecca Kadaga was invited to State House, Entebbe to explain her action.
According to insider sources, the president believed Kadaga’s action had a huge potential to paralyse government. This invitation to State House Entebbe, the second in as many days, was a desperate attempt by the executive to block debate on the controversial Shs 6bn bonus payments to the public officials whose efforts enabled Uganda to retain $434 million from the tax arbitration case between the government and Heritage Oil and Gas.
On January 9, a day before she adjourned the house, the Kamuli Woman MP had been invited to State House after she met a team of government technocrats led by Doris Akol, the commissioner general of Uganda Revenue Authority (URA), and rejected their justification for the bonus payment. Akol, a beneficiary herself, was the initiator and accounting officer of the bonus scheme.
Akol, Christopher Gashibarakye, commissioner for legal advisory services in the attorney general’s chambers, Moses Kaggwa, commissioner for tax policy at the ministry of finance, and a one Mayende were smuggled into a scheduled meeting between Kadaga and Prime Minister Ruhakana Rugunda.
Officially, the meeting was called to discuss the session’s legislative agenda (processing of bills) and the performance of ministers. Government Chief Whip Ruth Nankabirwa on January 19 confirmed in an interview with this writer that she indeed took Akol and her team to meet Kadaga, though many MPs remain suspicious of her intention.
According to MPs who spoke to this writer on condition of anonymity, Nankabirwa was persuaded by the bonus beneficiaries to kill the debate.
“She was in cohorts with some of the beneficiaries with a view that the motion is not heard,” an MP told The Observer on Friday.
One MP claimed that Nankabirwa told the president that Kadaga was working with the opposition to undermine him and the executive.
“That is why she also asked him [president] to address the NRM MPs before the motion [calling for investigation into the bonus payment] came up again [on January 18],” the source added.
Indeed, the shadow attorney general, Wilfred Niwagaba, last week harshly criticised Nankabirwa on the floor of Parliament when she again attempted to block the debate.
“This particular motion has been with all MPs for the last one week or so, including [Nankabirwa] who has been actively involved in making sure that this particular motion is not debated today [January 10],” Niwagaba said.
Nankabirwa was allegedly working with a senior minister plus the attorney general’s office in her attempt to frustrate the motion. It has also since emerged that the petitioner, Eric Sabiiti, is an employee of the Attorney General’s chambers but on secondment to the Electoral Commission’s legal department.
This raises the possibility of him having been deployed by some quarters to submit the petition under the guise of being an aggrieved private citizen.
TOOTH-AND-NAIL FIGHT
On January 10, when the motion was first tabled, Deputy Attorney General Mwesigwa Rukutana fought tooth and nail to sway Parliament to reject the motion in the face of a court injunction issued the previous day by Deputy Chief Justice Steven Kavuma.
Rukutana lost the fight and before Kadaga adjourned the House indefinitely, she asked him to make sure the ‘stupid order’ was vacated. Asked for a comment at the weekend, Nankabirwa roundly denied the allegations against her.
“That is total malice! I am not that type,” Nankabirwa said in a text message.
Prodded further, Nankabirwa said she led Akol’s team to the speaker’s meeting because (the meeting) was authorised by the prime minister.
“Gen [Moses] Ali was our leader [in the meeting],” Nankabirwa said.
MUSEVENI PINS KADAGA
A source close to the Office of Parliament Speaker told The Observer on Friday that during the State House meeting, the president asked Kadaga to explain her decision to adjourn parliament, which action in his view had potential to frustrate government work.
In her letter to the president a day after the adjournment, Kadaga accused officials in the Attorney General’s chambers of working in cohorts with some judicial officials to frustrate the work of Parliament.
The president had reportedly been told that Parliament had other business to do besides the motion and, by Kadaga adjourning the House, she played into the hands of the opposition to embarrass government.
During the meeting, Kadaga reportedly told Museveni that she adjourned the House in the best interest of the country because she didn’t want Parliament to be accused of contempt of court.
The court order, Kadaga reportedly said, came at a time when Parliament was, among other things, supposed to handle a supplementary budget request, consider the 2017/18 national budget and the petroleum fund and the capitalisation of Uganda Development Bank (UDB).
“She [Kadaga] told [Museveni] that all the business before the House touched the matter [bonus payment] and that it would not be possible for MPs to deliberate freely on all those matters without mentioning the Shs 6bn [bonus] and not be accused of being in contempt of court,” the source said.
The president also met the chief justice, Bart Katureebe, which meeting culminated into the judiciary issuing a press statement on January 11 regretting the stand-off between the different arms of government.
The attorney general eventually met Eric Sabiiti, the petitioner behind the court order, and he agreed to withdraw the petition so that Parliament could formally resume its work.
sadabkk@observer.ug