By Mulengera Reporters
Uganda Law Society President Isaac Ssemakadde has castigated the current top leadership of Uganda’s Judiciary saying its full of men and women who are unfit to attend or even speak at the Memorial event that is annually held at Judiciary headquarters to celebrate the memory of the fallen Chief Justice Ben Kiwanuka who paid the ultimate price for being very principled and uncompromising.
Speaking through his Deputy President Anthony Asiimwe, Ssemakadde told a large gathering of friends and professional colleagues who on Wednesday converged at the former Lord Mayor’s Wakaliga residence that Erias Lukwago (who continues to languish in Luzira for being Kizza Besigye’s lawyer) has many qualities which are similar to Ben Kiwanuka’s, a fearless and incorruptible political and legal colossus who hailed from Masaka just like him. See full video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u5UVH8men5s&pp=0gcJCZkLAYcqIYzv.
Ssemakadde, whose speech at the Wakaliga event was exactly what he intended to say to Ugandan judges at the Ben Kiwanuka last year memorial lecture which he was blocked from addressing, celebrated Erias Lukwago (who also is the President for PFF party) for being selfless, public-spirited and a fearless advocate of rule of law and Constitutionalism, the very ideals which Ben Kiwanuka espoused and actually died for at the hands of men from Amin’s State Research Bureau.
In contrast, Ssemakadde said today’s bench is full of spineless and unprincipled men and women who aren’t fit to even attend (let alone speaking at) the Ben Kiwanuka annual memorial event at the High Court headquarters in Kampala.
Ssemakadde asserted that inability to stand up and risk for the very ideals the former Chief Justice died for makes today’s bench members unfit to even mention his name or reference him anywhere in their judgments or academic works.
Ssemakadde also implied that the Ugandan judiciary top leadership had better stop holding that annual Ben Kiwanuka event because it’s simply a mockery of the ideals which the gentleman laid down his life for. There was visible consensus among the hundreds of the lawyers present that indeed the proposal to christen Erias Lukwago contemporary Uganda’s Ben Kiwanuka was well merited.
At the same event, Asiimwe announced plans to leverage the Radical New Bar Executive Order tactics to authorize the admission of non-lawyers into the RNB membership.
This was in response to Lukwago’s PFF Deputy Hon Lulume Bayiga, a medical doctor, who requested to be admitted into the RNB universe because there is a lot he shares with Isaac Ssemakadde’s approach to human rights and governance issues in Uganda. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
