By Mulengera Reporters
On Thursday, Miria Matembe, Winnie Kiiza, Sarah Bireete and Mukono Woman MP-Elect Sheila Amaniyo led women leaders in Kampala in demanding that Gen Museveni doesn’t base on Anita Among’s transgressions to lose trust in Women.
Their point was that Anita Among’s transgressions are individual failings which shouldn’t imputed on the rest of the women in leadership positions. They proposed that Ugandans condemn her as a person because she wasn’t representing fellow women in the things she did.
They expressed fears that the public anger Anita Among’s transgressions ignited might make Gen Museveni to feel justified to depart from the Ugandan long-held norm whereby a male Speaker is deputized by a female one-and vice versa.
Bireete and Matembe said they are afraid that what they see and hear ahead of the Monday Speakership vote indicates that Oboth-Oboth will become Speaker deputized by Thomas Tayebwa. They demanded that gender balance norms, as re-enforced under Article 21 of the Constitution, be adhered to so that one is male and another female.
Bireete said that the apparent purging and alienation of women had already been entrenched at the Judiciary leadership level where both the newly appointed Chief Justice (Flavian Zeija) and his Deputy (Moses Kawuma) are men. She demanded that the GoU acts more inclusively when it comes to Speakership race.
The women asserted that Anita Among’s dreaded legacy shouldn’t create an impression that all women leaders are synonymous with corruption, impunity, indifference, cruelty, pride and inefficiency. They argued that there are many other women who are capable of being great Speaker, Chief Justice and heads of other institutions.
At their news conference in Kampala, the women hesitated to defend Anita Among whose actions and omissions they asserted negatively impacted all Ugandans indiscriminately-regardless of gender. They must have found it hard to condemn or castigate the Ugandan state for the iron-fisted approach with which the Anita Among scandal has been approached, largely because of the public euphoria the same has ignited thus far.
Instead, the women leaders preferred to frame their message in terms of calling on the President, the ruling NRM party top leadership and the larger Ugandan populace not to lose trust and write off all women leaders simply because of Anita Among’s anomalous conduct.
None of the women present at the Thursday news conference had the guts to repeat the Uganda Law Society’s talking points castigating the state over perceived departure from the rules of natural justice in the conduct of the Anita Among investigations. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
