President Yoweri Museveni has taken a bold decision to further squeeze Speaker of Parliament Rebecca Kadaga and MPs who have been making noise over his criticism of the way they handled the Shs10bn Covid19 money.
On April 28, Museveni told the nation that the decision by Parliament to award each MP Shs20m to help in the fight against Covid was morally reprehensible and the MPs who have spent the money without the guidance of their respective district taskforces would be dealt with.
In response, the MPs said Museveni had embarrassed them, the Speaker and the Institution of Parliament. Kadaga called an emergency press conference to tell Ugandans how the executive and judiciary had launched an attack on the legislature. She promised to expose how other Covid supplementary budget allocations such as the one for the Office of the Prime Minister had been misused to buy expired milk and rotten beans.
Days later, Kira Municipality MP Ibrahim Ssemujju Nganda moved a motion to express displeasure in the president’s ‘disparaging remarks’ and to advise him to always write to Parliament instead of embarrassing honourable MPs in his televised addresses on Coronavirus.
However, Kadaga and her MPs seemed to have realized that they were fighting a battle they would not easily win. On Tuesday, Kole North MP Bonny Okello moved a motion to pay tribute to Museveni for the way he has led Uganda through the Covid19 crisis. Most MPs voted in favor of the motion after showering the president with praises.
While political analysts were still debating this as an attempt by MPs to appease the president so that he doesn’t deal with them the way he does with his opponents, a letter Museveni wrote on the day he told off MPs during his Covid19 address surfaced online.
In the letter, Museveni doesn’t only reiterate his position on the allocation’s illegality but also calls it an attack on the powers of the executive.
“First of all, it is unconstitutional. Both in logic and law, it cannot be correct that the Head of Government, the President, through the Ministers responsible, submits a plan for expenditure to Parliament, and, then, Parliament reshuffles the priorities and creates its own against the President,” wrote the president to the speaker.
“For parliament to unilaterally reshuffle the priorities of the government, it means that there is no need to have the president and the executive branch of government. How could that happen? Isn’t a supplementary expenditure part of the Finance Bill? Isn’t the president supposed to, first, assent or otherwise, to that bill before it becomes law? Who, then, authorised the expenditure according to a Bill that had not become law? Is that not illegal?”
After expressing his displeasure at the way the allocation was processed, he told Kadaga his decision to ensure that the matter is followed up to its logical conclusion.
“Are MPs the purchasing officer of the State of Uganda? My decision, therefore, by copy of this letter, I am requesting the Auditor General to audit this aspect, where the MPs became the ‘Purchasing’ Officers of the State and see whether their efforts were legal. I ask him to conclude it in four weeks so that we do not have to wait indefinitely,” announced Museveni.
This means that Auditor General John Muwanga will produce his report in the last week of May, to enable possible prosecution of MPs who broke the law, something that could once again see the general public demonise Kadaga and Parliament while praising Museveni for fighting corruption.
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