Age limit: Speaker Kadaga suspends six MPs as House is adjourned
The Speaker of Parliament, Rebecca Kadaga, has suspended six Members of Parliament (MPs) from seven sittings of the House.
She accused them of misconduct.
The suspended MPs are Allan Ssewanyana (Makindye West), Ssemujju Nganda (Kira Municipality), Jonathan Odur (Erute South), Gerald Karuhanga (Ntungamo Municipality), Mubarak Munyagwa (Kawempe North) and Anthony Akol (Kilak North).
“Don’t come back in the afternoon,” Ms Kadaga said just moments after adjourning the House to 2pm.
National Resistance Movement (NRM) MPs ululated following her directive whereas the Opposition MPs are coming to terms with what this means in terms of the Opposition’s numbers when the matter is put to a vote most probably by the end of this week.
This is Mr Odur's second suspension for the House's sittings in the course of three months.
When the House resumes in the afternoon, the chair of the Legal and Parliamentary Affairs chair Jacob Oboth will continue presenting the committee’s report on the pros and cons of the Constitution Amendment Bill, 2017.
Of all the proposals in the bill, the one that has attracted attention is the proposal to repeal Article 102 (b) of the Constitution to expunge term limits for presidential candidates.
The opposition MPs were raising procedural concerns about the method it was done.
They say debate should be after at least three days of the tabling of a report.
On the other hand, Ms Kadaga said that the [Clerk’s office] had days earlier electronically mailed the report to the MPs.
She seemed to equate tabling with mailing.
At the start of today’s sitting, Ms Kadaga warned MPs that she would not hesitate to suspend MPs for misconduct.
However, some of the suspended MPs have vowed not to obey the Speaker’s order describing it as weird.
“I find the ruling of the Speaker weird. I find it weird that she first adjourns the House then she suspends us. If you have adjourned Parliament, you can’t suspend MPs. Of all things, the last thing she should have done is abrogate the Rules of Parliament. We are not going to give up,” he said.
Mr Ssemujju said: “Kadaga interprets rules like she did not go to a nursery school. Everything happening is criminality. You cannot suspend MPs from the corridors. She had no authority to suspend us.”
But in an interview with NTV shortly after the suspension, Information and Communications Technology minister Frank Tumwebaze: “We should applaud the Speaker. She was magnanimous. The rules allow any member to sit on more than one committee. Our rules give the Speaker power to enforce them. When people are suspended, they should not cry."
