The race for the Speaker’s seat for the 10th Parliament has been gathering steam by the day, despite relentless calls for calm, from the ruling NRM party, from which the speaker will most likely come from.
It is a two horse race between the incumbent Hon Rebecca Kadaga and her deputy Jacob Oulanyah.
At the height of confrontation and verbal exchanges between the two contenders, the ruling party’s electoral commission recently came out and banned open campaigning for the seat, and threatened to disqualify the candidates who ever again take to the media with the mudslinging.
However, MPs who were recently elected into the 10th Parliament have not been barred and continue to express support for their favorite contender, including those from the opposition.
Among these is the opposition Forum for Democratic Change’s spokesperson Hon Ibrahim Semujju Nganda who has pronounced allegiance to the incumbent speaker Rebecca Kadaga.
Nganda while appearing a radio talk show yesterday, said he admired the Kamuli Woman MP, mostly for her courage to stand against President Yoweri Museveni even when the latter tried to bring her down.
Nganda accused the President of ‘stifling and ending the careers’ of previous speaker’s especially those that seemed to threaten replacing him.
However, Kadaga according to Nganda has handled this ending parliament term exceptionally well amidst all the pressure until President Museveni came out and openly threatened her.
“You have to agree when we started, that a good section of the public believed that Kadaga would be a good replacement of Museveni, and I think that was what caused problems at that time,” he said on the Capital Gang on Saturday.
“Kadaga has been a very good speaker, at least until the (President) started swearing that she was going to get into trouble with him if she continued to be as competent.”
Hon. Nganda’s distaste for Kadaga’s challenger however is also explainable. The two were not at the best of terms during the 9th Parliament. In 2013, he described Oulanyah as someone who does not want to be criticized, and one who keeps grudges.
This was after the Deputy Speaker ordered Nganda and two other MPs to be thrown out of Parliament for misconduct. The legislators were shoulder lifted and thrown out when they refused to leave. Nganda’s jacket was torn in the process.
Later when asked to rate his performance, Nganda remarked, “I think Oulanyah is second to (Edward) Ssekandi. They are the worst speakers this Parliament has ever seen. In fact Ssekandi is better than Oulanyah; Ssekandi could apologize to someone if he wronged him/her but Oulanyah cannot. You can do the bad things but retain a human face.”