The speaker of Parliament, Rt. Hon Rebecca Alitwala Kadaga, has ruled out taking up an appointment as Vice President if she is offered the job insisting she is focused on retaining her Speaker position in the coming parliament.
While addressing MPs of the Busoga Parliamentary Caucus at Hotel Africana in Kampala on Sunday, Kadaga said she would flatly reject that appointment because the Vice President is not in a decision-making position.
“Those who are proposing that I become the Vice President, let that position be given to others. There are many things we have achieved because of that chair (Speaker),” Kadaga said.
“Being a Vice President, you deputise another person. Here, I head an arm of government. That is the difference,” she said.
Ms Kadaga was responding to the MPs who vowed to defy any decision by the Central Executive Committee (CEC) of the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) party and the Parliamentary Caucus retreat at National Leadership Institute Kyankwanzi next month.
“They (Busoga MPs) want me to be in a decision-making position,” she said.
Iganga Municipality MP Peter Mugema, alias Panadol, told the Speaker not to betray Busoga by settling for the position of Vice President.
“I will say it even in the presence of the President that what we want is the position of Speaker but not Vice President,” Mr Mugema said, attracting an applause from the other members.
Meanwhile, Ms Kadaga also scoffed at those who are rooting for Mr Oulanyah to become Speaker on account that as the regional vice chairperson of NRM, he mobilised northern Uganda to vote for the President.
“In Busoga we have been voting NRM. They should find out what happened this time and then fix it. It is a fallacy to claim that this position (Speaker) should not be for areas where the President did not perform well. This 2021 is the first time they (northern region) have voted for the President,” she said.
Mr Asuman Basaliwa (Bugiri Municipality MP) said the challenge they are getting in campaigning for Ms Kadaga is that she is accused of conniving with the President to invite the army who beat up MPs during the age limit Bill debate.
The Speaker insisted that she never took part in inviting the army during the debate citing the October 23, 2017 letter she wrote to the President demanding answers on who ordered the soldiers attached to the Special Forces Command (SFC), the presidential guard unit, to raid the House to eject MPs who had been suspended on account of opposing the amendment and disrupting parliamentary proceedings.
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