Trending Wednesday evening was Mwesigwa Rukutana’s response to being thrown out of Justice Catherine Bamugemereire’s Commission of Land Inquiry.
The Deputy Attorney General was thrown out for allegedly ‘disrespecting and failing to provide clarity how Government arrived at Shs24billion meant to compensate Dr Muhammad Kasasa’ over Mutungo land.
According to a video by NTV that has since gone viral, Mr Rukutana tells Justice Bamugemereire ‘If you disrespect me I disrespect you.’
Thereafter, Justice Bamugemereire reads an already prepared script, saying all they wanted from Rukutana was his guidance to the commission and the compensation award that was granted to Kasasa.
Transcript:
Justice Bamugemereire: This is a commission of Inquiry, we expect you to be respectful. Can you please answer our counsel and the rest of us with the decorum expected? So answers such as ‘whatever it is’, ‘let me finish’ is not the kind of behavior we expect of an attorney general.
Rukutana: Well, if you find my manner or mode of presentation lacking…but I am trying to answer the questions as they are posed and I will maintain that stance.
Justice Bamugemereire: Can I have your word on this properly because this would determine whether we continue with you or not?
Rukutana: Which word?
Justice Bamugemereire: Are you going to be respectful to the commission….
Rukutana: Look my position is very clear. As long as iam respected, I will be respectful. If I am not respected I will not respect anybody.
Justice Bamugemereire: I think let’s stop here. Because let’s not pretend that we having a commission of inquiry hearing if we have come here for a person not less than the deputy attorney general to show this commission that we are a waste of time. Our main object is soliciting your guidance to this commission was to bring clarity to this compensation award that was granted to Kasasa. The compensation award that was granted to Dr Kasasa is a part of the wider dispute that this commission is inquiring. It is not the whole dispute and we had hoped that when the learned attorney general sits there, he is going to provide clarity and answers as to why things were done the way they were done.
There have been allegations that these figures and these contracts are arrived at through an inflated, irregular and even fraudulent process. As it turns out we are confronted by a situation of hostility, combativeness, disrespect a condescending attitude never ever seen before at this point in time as regards the attorney general’s opinion on this issue I will refer to his Excellency the President of Uganda who is the appointing authority so that probably the appointing authority can find another way of verifying, investigating and probing how Shs24.6billion is about to leave the treasury.
And probably, the appointing authority will find a body that the learned attorney general respects enough to compete with. We might actually have to rethink our methods but as of now, this interview is over, you are dismissed and discharged. Please get out of here.
Rukutana: Well all that is your prerogative. I have no interest in what you have said.
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