The name Persis Namuganza has been trending since last year over her bitter fight with the Speaker of Parliament Annet Anita Among.
Namuganza has since been censured by the Among- led House though the Bukono County Lwamaker insists the move was instigated by the House’s supremo with whom she has had a personal vendetta for questioning her “fraudulent” marriage with Budiope East MP Moses Hashim Magogo.
As the rest of the country struggles to come to terms with Namuganza’s obstinacy that finally chopped her fingers when she was forced out of Cabinet, Busoga vividly recalls the fiercest warrior they sent to Parliament.
An incident of 2018 has resurfaced in the minds and on the lips of the people of Busoga for which the Busoga Princess may struggle to rub off the memories of her fellow Basoga forever.
At the height of her bitter rivalry with Rebecca Alitwaala Kadaga, then Speaker of Parliament, Namuganza courageously asked the people of Namutumba to clobber her should the Kamuli Woman MP dare set food in the area once again.
She accused her of meddling in the affairs of Bukono Chiefdom from which she hails.
Kadaga had just been in the area to launch a borehole and also diffuse tensions between worrying factions fighting over leadership.
The Minister took her jabs a notch higher after she commanded that Kadaga should be muled along with her” political Kyabazinga” William Wilberforce Gabula Nadiope IV.
The declaration by Namuganza spurred outrage among the people of Busoga many of whom called for her expulsion from the Kingdom.
Among the people of the Busiki Kingdom County and Bulamogi in Kaliro District majority of whom are opposed to Kyabazinga Gabula’s Kingship, she was hailed as a vicious heroin.
In Jinja- Busoga’s Capital, she was a villain and she was declared undesirable.
Protests were organised under the tutelage of Hon Joan Machora, the Kyabazinga Minister of Information and declarations made that it would be suicidal if Namuganza dared cross the Nile into the Kyabazinga land again.
By disrespecting their King, angry Basoga suggested that Namuganza shouldn’t be allowed to return to the Kingdom since her conduct had indicated that she was no longer one of them.
Amidst the public rage, Members of Parliament from Busoga also sat and threatened to excommunicat the errant Princess from the Busoga caucus- a union body for Members of Parliament from the sub region.
Bukooli North County MP Gaster Mugoya Kyaawa who was the caucus chair at the time stressed the need to call Namuganza to order after what he called “overstepping boundaries” by attacking the King.
Namuganza was summoned to appear before the committee to answer the allegations against her and the committee threatened it would continue to pass judgement in her absentia if she refused to turn up.
In her characteristic stubbornness, Namuganza didn’t appear before the caucus and the rest is history.
This partly explains why the majority of Members of Parliament from Busoga supported the motion to have her censured when the issue was presented to the House for voting last on Tueaday. To many Basoga MPs, an opportunity to pay back for her disrespectful conduct towards the Kyabazinga and Kadaga whose fall from grace continues to be partly attributed to the troubled censured Minister.
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