What you need to know:
- Only five lawmakers voted against the motion, with three abstaining. Mr Thomas Tayebwa—the Deputy Speaker of Parliament who chaired yesterday’s sitting—emphasised that the censure motion could only succeed if at least 265 votes were cast in support of the motion out of the 527 current legislators.
When the roll call for yesterday’s censure vote ended up on Mr Moses Magogo’s name, the House burst into a collective chuckle before the Budiope East lawmaker revealed he favoured placing Ms Persis Namuganza’s head on the chopping block.
Ms Namuganza, the erstwhile junior Lands minister who doubles as Bukono County legislator, has in recent months been at loggerheads with her fellow members in the House. She was accused of, inter alia, being indisciplined and undermining the integrity of the House.
Part of the evidence that a Select Committee headed by Mr Mwine Mpaka adduced was a television interview in which Ms Namuganza claimed that she had been sanctioned for personal reasons. Last August, Mr Geoffrey Rwakabale—in his capacity as Makindye Division Town Clerk at the time—receded registration of the marriage of House Speaker Anita Among and Mr Magogo.
Mr Rwakabale is Ms Namuganza’s husband. Speaking last year, Mr Rwakabale said he “formally deleted the couple from the Division Customary Marriage Register” after “discover[ing] glaring omissions and errors.” The couple had held a customary marriage at Mestil Hotel in the latter part of last July.
While presenting the Select Committee’s report, Mr Mpaka ruled that the matters Ms Namuganza raised in the television interview were “obnoxious, reckless, insufferable, beyond the pale and in per incuriam (lack of due regard to the law or the facts).”
“It was an attack on the person of the Speaker and the Parliament without due regard to the rules of procedure, the protected status, the procedures of redress, the applicability of privilege and decorum of Parliament,” Mr Mpaka, also the Mbarara City South lawmaker, added.
