By Mulengera Reporters
On Tuesday LoP Joel Ssenyonyi convened a news conference at Parliament where he purported to be blowing the whistle about Shs400m fresh service award he claimed four back bench Commissioners of Parliament, including his predecessor Mathias Mpuuga, received recently.
He said the money was channeled through the operations of the Parliamentary SACCO in order to conceal any paper trail that could potentially lead to the information leaking to the public in the middle of the campaigning season.
Ssenyonyi claimed to have informally obtained his information through his own sources inside Parliament as opposed to obtaining the same formally through Parliamentary Commission meetings, from which he says the Speaker Anita Among has deliberately been excluding him.
That Among has all along been excluding him by denying him information or even invitation about such meetings because she knows he will use the platform to oppose many of the anomalous decisions taking place there. That since becoming LoP in December 2023, he has only been invited twice and was unable to show up because he is always invited at short notice.
Ssenyonyi said when they knew he will be blowing the whistle about the abusive allocation of Shs1.2bn to be shared by the four Commissioners, the leadership at Parliament used their proxies operating on social media to originate a rumor that he too had been given Shs650m as service award. He says he hasn’t yet received that money but he has given standing instructions to his bank to immediately send it back to the sender in case it ever comes onto his account.
The Nakawa West MP clarified that he is opposed to such money because it’s illegal and instead advised fellow Commission members who have been advocating for such monies to be bold enough and bring a proper amendment to the law and begin to transparently be given such monies.
OBORE PUSHES BACK:
Director of Communications at Parliament Chris Obore acknowledged that all Commission members, including Ssenyonyi, are his bosses but went on to call on the LoP to graduate from the journalist he used to be and begin to demonstrate leadership that is expected of someone at that level.
He dismissed the LoP’s utterances as mere limelight-seeking and implored him to begin conducting himself more responsibly. He demanded that Ssenyonyi should demonstrate transparency, he claims to be fun of, by personally accounting for the Shs2.8bn that is annually allocated to him as LoP.
He said it’s improper for Ssenyonyi to seek to destroy fellow leaders through giving unverified information to the public. He demanded that the LoP shares with journalists pay slips showing and evidencing how money moved from the coffers of Parliament to the bank accounts of individual Commissioners.
He added that Adolf Mwesige, who is Clerk and accounting officer to Parliament, is a seasoned and sophisticated bureaucrat who can’t allow public funds to be expended in such a casual manner as Ssenyonyi described at his news conference.
He defended the four back bench Commissioners by making it clear there are accounting protocols which make it impossible for them to casually feast on public funds as the LoP claimed. Obore also advised Ssenyonyi to reflect on the fact that he is no longer the NTV news anchor he used to be and begins to behave in a manner that shows respect for the public office he occupies.
On his part, Solomon Silwanyi, who flanked Chris Obore as they addressed reporters on the steps of Parliament, defended Ssenyonyi against claims that he had received Shs650m and added that even the claims against him and three others were equally untrue. He clarified that no such money had been paid out to Ssenyonyi.
He added that the LoP had merely panicked about his rumored Shs650m and regrettably reacted by making wild claims against fellow Commission members. He accused Ssenyonyi of appearing and speaking before reporters after taking an overdose of marijuana. He advised LoP to spend more time overcoming his weed addictions instead of expending energy on destroying people’s names. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
