Kadaga: Why I don’t want to be Museveni’s Vice President

Speaker of Parliament Rebecca Kadaga has explained why she is insisting on keeping her current job, and not taking up a new role as Yoweri Kaguta Tibuhaburwa Museveni’s Vice President.

Kadaga is seeking a third term as speaker of Parliament.

She faces three other candidates: her deputy for 10 years Jacob Oulanyah (NRM, Omoro), FDC spokesperson and opposition whip in Parliament Ibrahim Ssemujju Nganda (Kira Municipality), and Bukoto Central MP-elect Richard Ssebamala (DP, Bukoto Central).

Meeting MPs and MPs-elect from her home Busoga sub-region on March 28 at Hotel Africana in Kampala, Kadaga explained why she has rejected calls for her to take up the vice president role like her predecessor Edward Kiwanuka Ssekandi.

Ssekandi was speaker for 10 years before Museveni appointed him VP, paving way for Kadaga — who had been Ssekandi’s deputy — to rise as head of the legislative arm of government.

“I have refused that position. Being vice president means you are second to somebody else. In Parliament, I am the head of the legislative arm,” she said.

“The president is the head of the executive arm, the vice president is under him. But here I am the head. That is the difference.”

According to Kadaga, as vice president, she wouldn’t have authority and power to change things in the manner she wants to.