More details continue to emerge about the deepening rift between President Yoweri Museveni and Speaker Rebecca Kadaga.
This website has seen a letter written by Museveni to Kadaga explaining his displeasure with the way parliament ‘diverted shs20m from a government plan.’
While passing the supplementary budget to help the country deal with the coronavirus pandemic, parliament included a shs10bn portion for itself that would see each lawmaker pocket shs20m to participate in the fight against the virus.
The president would then go ahead to bash parliament’s rationale to take the money on national TV, something that did not go well with the Speaker, sparking a bitter rift.
However, the letter written by Museveni on the 28th April shows that the legislature diverted from an agreed plan.
“I am writing to you in the matter of the Shs.20 million which Parliament diverted from the Government plan to another purpose. First of all, this is unconstitutional,” the letter reads in part.
It adds, “Both in logic and law, it cannot be correct that the Head of Government, the President, through the Ministers responsible, submits a plan for expenditure to Parliament and, then, Parliament reshuffle the priorities and creates its own against the plan of the President.”
The president and parliament have since agreed to form a constituency task force team that will be headed by MPs in a bid to calm political tensions between the legislature and the executive.
BELOW IS THE FULL LETTER
I am writing to you in the matter of the Shs.20 million which Parliament diverted from the Government plan to another purpose.
First of all, this is unconstitutional.
Both in logic and law, it cannot be correct that the Head of Government, the President, through the Ministers responsible, submits a plan for expenditure to Parliament and, then, Parliament reshuffles the priorities and creates its own against the plan of the President.
Yes, Parliament may approve or disapprove. That is in order.
In that case, the President will discuss with the MPs, hear one another, logic and agree to a way forward.
However, for Parliament to unilaterally reshuffle the priorities of the Government, it means that there is no need to have the President and the Executive Bran. of Government.
The Parliament .1 have become both the Executive and the Legislature.
This is not correct. thdeed, the Constitutional Court, in the case of Parliamentary Commission Vs Muiesigye Wilson Constitutional Appeal No. 08 of 2016, guided the country on that.
This is something that should not happen again. Indeed, I have discussed with you this matter a number of times.
When it came to the matter of the Shs.20 million for each MP, by the time you came to see me with the Rt. Hon. Prime Minister, we were told that the money had already been sent to the MP’s accounts.
How could that happen? Isn’t a supplementary expenditure part of the Finance Bill?
Isn’t the President supposed to, first, assent or otherwise, to that Bill before it becomes Law?
Who, then, authorized the expenditure according to a Bill that had not become Law?
Is that not illegal? I had all these issues in head.
However, when you came to See me, in my usual way of looking for peace (“Blessed are the peace-makers, for they will be called children of God” in the Book of Mathew Chapter 5, Verse 91, I limited my advice to you to only the issue of getting our MPs, the NRM MPs and other well-meaning MPs, out of a trap they had got themselves in.
This was the morally reprehensible image of trying to benefit personally from a national crisis by misusing the powers they have to allocate themselves that money while there are many legitimate and Argent needs.
I told you to, please, get our MPs out of that cut de sac by each MP taking the money to the District Chief Administrative Officer (CAO) in the presence of the District Task Force.
In that case, the problem would only have remained between the Executive and Parliament of reshuffling the priorities of the Executive without consultation.
However, the Public anger that the MPs were self-serving, selfish people, especially the MPs of the NRM, would have been obviated.
I now, however, hear and I have seen on some TV pictures, MPs distributing food to the Public or MPs delivering items to the District Task Force.
The question is: “Are MPs the Purchasing Officers of the State of Uganda?”
The Accounting Officers of the country are well-known.
The MPs are certainly not among them.
What procurement rules did these individual MPs follow?
My decision, therefore, is that by copy of this letter, I am requesting the Auditor General to audit this aspect, where the MPs became the “Purchasing” Officers of the State and see whether their efforts were legal.
I ask him to conclude it in four weeks so that we do not have to wait indefinitely.
Did the MPs follow the health precautions of the Ministry of Health when they were distributing food? I have been to Karamoja to open the marble factory, in Nakasongola to launch the launch the fire-fighting vehicle of the Luwero Industries and to Jinja to deal with the crisis of the water levels.
In all these cases, groups of people were trying to stop me to tell me this or that. I refused to stop because it would violate the pandemic precautions of not gathering more than 5 people.
It can endanger people. I do not want to be a cause of a single infection on account of my stopping to talk to groups. That is why the Task Forces use non-political people – soldiers etc. How did the MPs handle this?
I have told the Minister of Health to audit this and write to you with copies to the relevant people, including myself.
This is in order to see how to limit this damage. The MPs that handed the money to the CAO should be left out of this enquiry.
