In the presence of President Yoweri Museveni, head of state and national chairman of the ruling NRM party to which she belongs, Speaker Anita Among Annet Magogo has vowed not to quit her job despite calls by Ugandan youth protesters calling on her to step aside over allegations of corruption.
Speaking at a presidential rally held at Ruhinda North’s Rwakitandara grounds in Mitooma District where President Museveni talked to hundreds of supporters of the National Resistance Movement and MP Thomas Tayebwa, this was the first time she was broaching the thorny issue of calls on her to resign since the youth-led protests, including an anti-corruption march to Parliament, broke out on July 23.
Trying to shift the blame and burden of corruption away from the House and to heap it onto accounting officers, she told the president that parliament – and MPs – were not corrupt since they do not account for government funds. Anita Among was visibly tired of Ugandans labelling Parliament as corrupt and MPs as thieves.
She also praised the president as an anti-corruption crusader and even claimed that the ‘attacks’ against the House were due to the good relationship between the executive and the legislature – which observers may consider an affront on the democratic principle of separation of powers.
“Your Excellency [Museveni], when you start marching that you are marching for corruption, the first fighter for corruption is your good self and we do appreciate. These MPs are not Accounting Officers, we don’t account. The stealing doesn’t start from Parliament. Let us not demonize Parliament,” the Speaker defended her House.
“You start marching, wasting Government resources. And one thing, again, why they are marching [against] MPs [is] because as 11th Parliament we decided to work with the President; we no longer have any conflict between Legislature and Executive.”
At least five MPs are on remand over two corruption scandals: the Uganda Human Rights Commission (UHRC) budget saga in which legislators are accused of promising to raise the commission’s budget on condition that a significant amount of the same will go to their pockets; and the cooperatives compensation scandal in which some MPs took billions meant for cooperatives.
Interestingly, Speaker Anita Among and other MPs like Juliet Kinyamatama defended one of the MPs accused of corruption with the speaker making it clear that embattled Cissy Namujju will be MP ‘forever’ and Kinyamatama praising Namujju for reportedly stealing and sharing the loot with her voters. (See Details Here, There and Over There).
Speaker Anita Among also regurgitated President Museveni’s claims that foreign interests and agents were the ones behind the protests and calls on her to resign. But both avoided the hard task of directly addressing specific allegations, choosing to hide behind gays and sweeping the serious allegations under the carpet. (See Details Here and There).
Days ago, President Museveni said he would have joined the protests by youths but he had gotten intelligence reports that the youthful demonstrators were being funded by foreign agents, and that these had planned to do “very bad things” to Uganda but security had swung in action to block the protests and nip the alleged bad plans in the bud. Museveni even said that a lot of evidence to prove this claim would soon come out when the remanded protestors are arraigned in courts of law. (Read Museveni’s full statement Here).
And for Speaker Anita Among, whenever there have been demands for accountability and calls on her to explain her role in parliament’s alleged extravagant expenditures, abuse of office, diversion of funds and irregular recruitment, she has always played the victim card, claiming she is being witch hunted for her stance against gay rights, including her efforts in leading Parliament to pass the Anti-Homosexuality Act, considered one of the world’s harshest by the Western powers.
In Mitooma, Speaker Among told those present that the Parliament she leads will not give in to the demands of protesters or their alleged foreign funders keen on forcing Uganda repeal the anti-gay law.
“The Bible says Adam was given to Eve; Eve wasn’t given to Eve, or Adam wasn’t given to Adam. So, that is why we are proud as a Parliament of Uganda, and when you see the demonstrations that are in town now, are out of that, they are demonstrating because they are self seekers. These are people who don’t want us to respect our values and as Ugandans, MPs, we will stand by the decision we made,” Anita Among said.
Ahead of the protests, there was confusion as the issue of homosexuality rights were smuggled into the anti-corruption march to parliament, with LGBTQI activists openly demanding the repeal of the Anti-Homosexuality Act – and attempting to make it one of the key issues for the protests by the youths in conservative Uganda. (See Details Here).
Speaker Anita Among also made it clear she would not resign her speaker job. “You move around trying to destroy the country and saying ‘Anita must resign! Resign and go where? I am still around,” she said.
Earlier on Sunday, Speaker Anita Among had also made it clear that she still had one term to be speaker after which she would hand over to Thomas Tayebwa and go since, she claimed, she does not want to overstay in power. (Read Story Here).
On his part, Deputy Speaker Anita Among revealed the source of the billions of money he used to build a mega catholic church after allegations that he had used government money to build the House of God. (See Details Here).
