By Mulengera Reporters
At his Tuesday news conference, Justice & Constitutional Affairs Minister Norbert Mao said, as someone who was very close to Jacob Oulanyah, he feels obliged to stand for the position of Speaker of Parliament in order to enforce the values the deceased espoused.
That he also believes what is happening at Parliament today and the way business has been conducted at the legislature is totally different from what the late Oulanyah envisaged.
He said that wherever he is, Oulanyah would be very disappointed to see the current direction and state of affairs at Parliament going on without his very good friend doing anything to confront the situation. He said that Olanyah can’t be happy with the current situation at Parliament which he said had become synonymous with low standards and generally poor quality of work.
Speaking cautiously ostensibly not to hurt the current Speaker and Deputy or be seen to be targeting them, Mao said there is a lot at today’s Parliament which Jacob Oulanyah would find to be abhorrent.
He gave the example of the institution being claimed on paper to be a people-centered Parliament yet at the same time be paranoid and fearful of ordinary Ugandans congregating there. He said the corruption allegations which Ugandans keep making online is another thing that Oulanyah would have been very resentful about.
He also spoke about the need to diminish on the number of visible uniformed security operatives whose presence he said had turned the Parliamentary premises to look like a military garrison. He also added that Oulanyah wouldn’t be happy presiding over a House of over 530 MPs, majority of whom he said are less influential and less respected than members of Buganda or Toro kingdom Lukiiko.
He referred to what Hon Jonathan Odur said sometime back when he casually referred to Oweekitibwa (honorable in Luganda) to mean a thief. Mao vowed to work deliberately to rectify all these existing anomalies as soon as he becomes Speaker of Parliament. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
