Parliament has started investigating the Shs 6bn presidential gift to 42 government officials who won $700m from a capital gains tax dispute with oil companies.

President Museveni has described the beneficiaries as heroes, but MEDARD LUBEGA SSEGGONA, the Busiro East MP and Shadow minister for Justice and Constitutional Affairs, tells Baker Batte Lule that the president can’t dole out government money as if it was personal cash.

The speaker of parliament last week described as stupid a court order issued by Justice Steven Kavuma [stopping the MPs’ investigation into the Shs 6bn cash bonus] and subsequently you, as parliament, bulldozed the petitioner into withdrawing it. Weren’t you setting a bad precedent?

Obviously, we never bulldozed anyone into withdrawing the petition. We never even asked for a meeting with Eric Sabiiti [petitioner]. We never even suggested meeting him. As parliament, we only received his lawyers, coming to tell us they didn’t know about the actual perspective of the case.

They apologized not only to us but the country at large. The description of the order as stupid is a choice of word and I think it was not an insult intended to abuse but to describe what the speaker read of the contents [of the order].

Some people argue that parliament also acted highhandedly in its response to the order, forcing Sabiiti to withdraw the petition. As a lawyer, were parliament’s actions justified?

The manner of the withdrawal can only best be explained by the petitioner, who withdrew it. But I think it was not filed in good faith in the first place. It was intended to conceal certain mischievous acts by officers of government.

Secondly, the actual filing of the petition was against the public service standing orders that govern all government employees. I think Mr Sabiiti had not sought clearance or gone through the relevant procedures of the government standing orders. You have to seek guidance from the solicitor general, which he didn’t do.

In my view, even that requirement does not make sense because a person who feels aggrieved should have direct access to courts of law. I don’t need your consent to sue you but the point is what he was suing over.

Secondly, how did he get the interim order in the first place? Officers in the attorney general’s chambers who probably felt threatened are the ones who engineered the petition; we have evidence to that effect. We are just being civil especially since the petition has been withdrawn and the orders vacated.

It was parliament that approved Justice Kavuma’s appointment against the advice of many people. Why are you complaining about his actions?

I don’t want to comment on the leanings, behavior or misbehavior of a judge. My duty as an officer of the court is to uphold and preserve the sanctity of that court. It is a very high office,a justice of the Court of Appeal and above all, the deputy chief justice.

I will never be tempted to make comments that are derogatory of a judge or a court of law. I want to look at the order on its merits. For me, I want to talk about the Attorney General’s chambers, who are presumably our lawyers as parliament. We are just across the road. How did the attorney general get sued and went to court and made a concession without consulting his client; the relevant government organ, which is parliament?

Speaking as a politician and not as an officer of court, do the Justice Kavuma’s orders, which the opposition has always referred to as draconian, bother you?

Of course they bother me. You see, justice must not only be done but it must be seen to be done. People must have the confidence in the judiciary and the judicial officer making the order. In other words, you might find that even if it was me, I would have issued the order. But the question is the manner in which the order was issued.

That order had the effect of stifling parliament. You are not talking about an individual but the operations of parliament. By the way, previously, there was a law that barred injunctions against government until this constitutional dispensation came in place. Tell me if you say I shouldn’t’ investigate, inquire into, discuss or do anything; how I’m going to approve a budget or work on the budget framework paper?

You see, in the budget preparations, we reallocate funds; so, how do you want me to allocate funds to the oil sector that is under review without discussing these issues or asking for accountability? Yes, we won a case and we were awarded damages; by the way, we had even collected less against Heritage, where is the money so that we can appropriate it.

Those were the issues that the members were raising. Incidentally, I’m not one of the persons bringing the motion. I’m only concerned as a member of parliament, when a motion has been tabled and someone says he doesn’t want to hear it. I must say that one side, which has not actually come out is that we obeyed the court order, notwithstanding our reservations. Did we carry on with the discussion? No; we instructed our lawyer, the attorney general, to go and have it vacated.

Are you not setting a bad precedent, that you can sit and make declarations against court orders simply because you don’t believe in them and the country is bending towards your side?

The country is not bending on our side. We are the country for your information, because we represent those people whose funds are under review. Point number two, even the petitioner was filing the petition against the country.

He knew he was alone against the country. He was suing Uganda, so what is wrong with Ugandans objecting to the petition and celebrating withdrawal? Remember it is not a personal right that was being violated because Sabiiti was not listed as one of the beneficiaries unless we don’t have the full list of the handshake.

Two, we are privy to information that he was colluding with some people within the Attorney General’s chambers. We said, look,you are colluding with someone who is suing us and you are pretending to be the one representing us in court.  Some people informed us that actually the petition was drafted from the Attorney General’s chambers by our own officers who probably benefited from the handshake.

I also want to look at the bigger picture; was the criteria used to choose who benefited from the handshake, legal or otherwise? Those are the areas we want to put to our officers. We want to know and maybe come up with recommendations. Let’s have a streamlined door and policy on how to give out those handshakes.

As an officer of court, do you protest or just appeal against a court order?

You can appeal but you can also protest. A protest is an expression against an order. You can say you have made your order, I abide by it but I’m dissatisfied. We took both options of protesting against but we also instructed our lawyer to appeal against it.

Is it a problem the Attorney General representing you as parliament?

Yes, it is a problem. I led a team as the shadow minister of Justice and Constitutional Affairs that proposed an amendment to the effect that the Attorney General should not be part of cabinet. In the US, the Attorney General is not a member of cabinet. The point is, we want to separate powers.

We want the Attorney General to be purely technical; get him out of politics so that he does a neutral, impartial and technical job. Number two, there is an apparent contradiction. In the Constitution, you establish a parliamentary commission as a body corporate that can sue and be sued, why would you go ahead and sue the Attorney General, for the actions of a body corporate?

Sue the parliamentary commission and if we need technical assistance from the Attorney General we will seek his services. Our work is oversight over the executive to which the Attorney General is a member. He is collectively bound by the decision of the executive on which we carry out oversight.

So, what do they do, some busybody drafts papers from the street, sometimes with the Attorney General’s people, file them in court and then when the Attorney General gets to court, he gets consent by collusion. So, let’s be independent, we represent ourselves and when we need the services of the Attorney General we will get to him because we know where he stays.

When the president met the NRM caucus, he praised those who got the handshake as heroes. He warned parliament to stop behaving as though it’s the only one that cares about Uganda.

What is our work? Oversight over his actions. Number two; he is the chief executive of the country, but his executive powers are subject to the Constitution. Who allowed him to donate money that is not appropriated for that function? Who allowed him to appropriate money without the procedure as set out in the law?

I’m aware that he has been donating money to his relatives, etc, but he has been using his presidential donations as a scheme, which I also think must be regulated and curtailed. Ugandans are dying of hunger and you allow the president to donate billions to relatives and kinsmen? That must also stop. But in this particular case, he wasn’t even using his own money.

He was using money that was not appropriated in the hope that he will obtain retrospective approval. Three, what did those officers who got the handshake do in the first place? We want to know, that’s why we want them to come to parliament and tell us what they did. Their work is to collect taxes from taxpayers.

Heritage was a taxpayer and they were supposed to approve the transfers. We warned the president when he was signing those [production sharing] agreements. We said we must scrutinize them, the man refused. It was the duty of URA to collect the taxes. Some of them were not even there when the case was being argued.

None of those people ever agued a case involving Heritage and the Attorney General of Uganda. They did not act as lawyers in that case. Some of them are not even qualified to practice law. Tell me how a woman like Jennifer Musisi [KCCA, executive director] who doesn’t even have a practicing certificate could represent Uganda in the arbitration.

What did she do for us to get that money? She left URA six years ago. The others went to London to watch over the case purely as clients, what did they do to deserve the money? The other issue is, what criteria did they use to distribute the money? You see the deputy Attorney General getting Shs 90 million, you get a state attorney getting Shs 230 million.

There was no criterion and these are public funds. Mr Museveni can donate his cows and milk, not our money like that. I think the president must avoid acting mischievously because this is not his but our money. Whatever they discussed in the NRM caucus or CEC is idle talk, it actually assumes criminality you were not party to.

Assuming these people committed a crime with this; we have not heard from them. It is important and in their interest because they have been condemned; a number of them are my colleagues, they have been bashed left, right and center. Why? It’s because a busybody moved out of his way, to frustrate their right to a fair hearing.

They should be condemning Sabiiti because he actually caused all this mayhem by stopping them from being heard. I believe Sabiiti has a right to go to court if he feels aggrieved by any violations of the laws. That’s why I don’t even agree with the public service standing orders, which stop him from going to court.

But the point is, in doing what he did, he denied them the right to be heard. If it’s true that what they did is illegal, the president is an accomplice to the criminality; so, his moral authority to even speak on the matter is tilted and tainted.

In the coming LC elections, people are going to line behind candidates; as shadow minister forconstitutional affairs, is it something you would support?

That is the current law, assuming the president signed on it. I objected to those amendments when they were being made in parliament. But we go by the majority, I was defeated democratically.

I conceded; that is what majority of the parliamentarians thought was right simply because someone is wasting money somewhere and he doesn’t want to inject it in LC elections. He doesn’t find them important. Of course Ugandans want to make deals.

For example, if we appropriate say, Shs 200bn, they will tell you that it is not enough because they want to get involved in the procurement process and earn some money. But if we had a clearly drawn budget, we could do it. Why would we even import these ballots; we could make them locally. But because Ugandans are so mischievous, they will find ways of rigging LC elections.

It’s about the integrity of the process that makes it expensive. Probably we have not done enough investment in the integrity of our people. I must say it’s backward that you still line up to elect a leader. It must be by secret ballot as envisaged in article 68 of the constitution. People deserve privacy even in voting.

bakerbatte@gmail.com