Kiiza’s one year at the helm of Opposition

What you need to know:

  • Accountability. It was a tale of countless achievements and accomplishment as Leader of Opposition in Parliament Winifred Kiiza accounted for her one year in office. More than 15 issues were listed by the Kasese lawmaker as the accountability for her team’s maiden session in Parliament, Ibrahim A. Manzil writes.

It was a tale of countless achievements and accomplishment as Leader of Opposition in Parliament Winifred Kiiza accounted for her one year in office.

Ms Kiiza became Leader of Opposition after a divisive jostling for the highly coveted position that weakened cohesion in the Forum for Democratic Change party.

More than 15 issues were listed by the Kasese lawmaker as the accountability for her team’s maiden session in Parliament.
In a June 12, 2016, Sunday Monitor interview, Ms Kiiza placed holding government to account, provision of alternative policies and keeping the Executive under constant check as her leadership’s main scorecard.

“Committing ourselves to ensure that government is in constant check; provides to Ugandans what it has committed itself to do and we must hold them accountable,” Ms Kiiza told Sunday Monitor then.

A year later, Ms Kiiza gave herself high marks on “fighting against human rights abuses,” brushing aside Democratic Party president general Norbert Mao’s recent criticism of her leadership.

Mr Mao, at a news conference in April, branded Ms Kiiza as “weak,” saying the Opposition in Parliament has failed to come up with alternative policies, instead dwelling on trivia.

“The LoP [Kiiza] is very weak, there is no action on the floor of Parliament; the only thing we know is walk-outs, throwing papers and drama than challenging the government on policy arena,” Mr Mao told Daily Monitor then.

Ms Kiiza told journalists that Mr Mao’s criticism was specific to insecurity and the food crisis, which she said was addressed by the Opposition.

“The member who even presented the issue (insecurity) was our shadow minister of Internal Affairs- Hon Muwanga Kivumbi, who is a member of DP,” she said.

Ms Kiiza said her team highlighted human rights violations at the infamous Nalufenya police detention facility, saying it raised eye-brows on the matter.

“You will recall that we presented a minority report with regards to a visit by the Committee of Human rights on Nalufenya; our member of the committee realised that there were salient issues that were not captured in the minority report,” she said.

She said the Opposition extracted an apology from police on what she termed as the arrest and brutalisation of Opposition leaders by the police after the 2016 general election.

“As soon as the elections were over, Dr Besigye was arrested, our member raised the issue of police brutality and I can say the police apologised and the minister of Internal Affairs apologised,” she said.

Mr Mao sought to clarify his position in a telephone conversation with Sunday Monitor, saying his criticism was general and not personal.

“My assessment was of the team and not of the individual,” insisting that “you need to have a benchmark of the Opposition parties [that led the Opposition in Parliament]; that is why I said they are the weakest from the 1960s.”

Immediate former Leader of Opposition Philip Wafula Oguttu excused himself from reviewing Ms Kiiza, although Prof Morris Ogenga Latigo, also treading carefully, offered to make a careful assessment of his current boss.

“I can say that one of the differences between the current Opposition and the one in my time was that the parties in Opposition worked single-mindedly together both in and outside Parliament,” said Prof Ogenga Latigo, also a former Leader of Opposition.

This, apparently, was a veiled reference to the intra-Opposition parties rivalry that has since seen parties like the Uganda Peoples Congress align with the ruling National Resistance Movement, both inside and outside Parliament to a considerable extent.

He also addresses himself to a challenge with which Ms Kiiza also identified, that of Parliament, especially the Opposition side, being filled with young Turks and political newcomers.

“We had a Parliament that was composed of very senior people like Ben Wacha, who would present views that were respected and upheld,” he said, adding that the current Opposition has a very big challenge dealing with younger MPs.

“When I was LoP, Parliament had a very focused legislative agenda, but now there is some kind of political fatigue in this country where people feel whatever you do cannot yield anything positive at all, an atmosphere that affects the current opposition leadership,” he said.

Challenges
Ms Kiiza tactfully skipped a question regarding what she considers to be her team’s low points and failures in holding government to account.

Ms Kiiza’s troops in Parliament, most often, read from different scripts, an issue that affects coherence and team work.

Whereas she leads the entire Opposition represented in Parliament, a bruising ideological and political division in her Forum for Democratic Change backyard couldn’t spare her Parliament leadership.

Ms Kiiza promised to unveil a strategic plan for the Opposition in Parliament, which she hopes will give her team the locus of operation.

Political researcher Frederick Kisekka-Ntale believes the Opposition could have done more in the last session, if it laid emphasis on more policy and ideological engagement with government.

“It should be able to put in place tight policy proposals that are assailable. It should be able to come up with propositions, views and ideas of advocacy that should be able to demonstrate to government how better things should be done,” argues Dr Kisekka-Ntale.

He advises Opposition leader Kiiza to avail herself with “extra skills of diplomacy,” and find better ways of engaging government through “policy, civility and progressiveness”.

Perhaps alive to the divisive nature of the dialogue-phobic politics, where an Opposition leader engaging a government official is to be consigned to the league of despised political moles, Dr Kisekka-Ntale speaks to Ms Kiiza’s dilemma.

“Today the LoP is held captive between the hardliners and moderates in her party; she is now on an ice-slate to appease both sides, and she will end up doing nothing,” he says, concluding that “Certain demonstrable achievements are not seen in my view.”

Task ahead
Ms Kiiza looks to the age-limit debate as a storm-on-the-way, which her team will have to deal with head-on.
“Ensuring that electoral reforms are made, and on the presidential age limit, we in the Opposition have not been talking about this matter because the matter is in the Constitution, we don’t want to invite President Museveni to tamper with the Constitution,” said Ms Kiiza.

The law
Office of the Leader of Opposition in Parliament was created by the Administration of Parliament (Amendment) Act 2006.
The holder of this office sits on the Parliamentary Commission, a body that runs the administration of Parliament and plan for welfare of MPs and staff.

The Act outlines the role of the Leader of Opposition as “to hold the government to account,” through providing alternative policies and opinion.

The office holder enjoys the benefits and privileges of a Member of Parliament and a Cabinet Minister too.
She is entitled to a lead car and a chauffeur driven vehicle, as well as security personnel drawn from the Uganda Police Force to guard her residence, and an official Aide De Camp.

She serves a two and a half-year renewable term. Forum for Democratic Change’s November election of new party president will determine Ms Kiiza’s political future.

Mr Nathan Nandala-Mafabi, himself former Leader of the Opposition, will be tussling it out with current party president, Maj Gen Mugisha Muntu, and whoever wins will review the term of the Opposition chief in Parliament.

My role is to be Opposition leader for all parties in Parliament, not only FDC

DP leader Norbert Mao has spoken to clarify his remarks about your leadership, saying compared to Opposition in the 60s and 80s, yours is the weakest.

When they are talking about the Opposition, the Opposition is not just coming from mars, it comes from the population. So you cannot create an Opposition, or you cannot lead [in Parliament], people who have not been voted.

If we had the calibres of the Maos [Democratic Party president] in the Opposition maybe it would be a different issue, but we don’t have them, so you have to cut your coat according to your cloth.

We are not going to say we must have an Opposition like we had in the 60s because those were different breed of leaders, and the current ones are also different and possibly their situations were also different.

The times are different, the way we have been considering things is also different from those days.

We may do our bit depending on our situation, and possibly when I get away Museveni may find himself the Leader of the Opposition in the next Parliament.

Let’s face it, your party was divided between the defiance camp and those that felt the Opposition had to engage government. Don’t you find difficulty in navigating the two sides?
Well, there is no difficulty in it. All you need to do is to understand what you want to achieve and because I know that all the programmes are intended to achieve the same goals, I don’t find any difficulty.

Do you not find it difficult to work for both the interests of the defiance group and those that think there should be some level of engagement with government?

What you should know is that I lead parties of the Opposition in Parliament, so when you ask me to now carry the FDC message in Parliament when you know that we are different political parties in Parliament then you want to derail me from the issues.

Even when I am Winnie Kiiza from FDC, the FDC still has a whip in Parliament who is supposed to bring the views of FDC on behalf of the FDC.

Because the assumption is that there will be a situation when FDC will at one point have a different view from DP and UPC, we have to sit down and agree on how to move in Parliament.
When we choose to sit down and agree that I think this matter needs defiance, we defy.

You may remember when we started, Dr Besigye was in prison and we all agreed to tell Museveni that enough is enough; those who were not FDC stood up and raised placards. We had agreed about it in the Opposition because we said this should be the method of work.

Even in FDC where we have those two platforms that we use to engage, there will be a time where we say this calls for defiance, we know this time calls for negotiating and we negotiate.

It is not going to be strictly defiance or strictly negotiation.

Talk about your advocacy for rights and freedoms. When you were appointed LoP, you gave an interview to the Sunday Monitor where you said your focus would be to champion the rights of victims of brutality.

And I think I have tried, and I think it is one of the issues that I raised in the milestone and I even mentioned it that for the first time we saw police leaders being disciplined. It had never happened in years.

The police can stand up to say we are sorry, and even go an extra mile to demote their officers; for me I look at it as an achievement. You see people want you to continue fighting even when there seems to be no fight.

You have seen us fight here for the rights of people who have been brutally murdered in Rwenzori; you have seen us fight for the rights of those who were brutally murdered in Apaa; you have seen us fight for the rights of the mayor of Kamwenge.
Actually, I am among the first Ugandans to have dared to take President Museveni to the ICC in pursuit of the people’s rights.

None of the former leaders have done it; not even Mao who comes from the north where violation of people’s rights was committed.

Do you think you are sufficiently engaging government on policy alternatives to the ones proposed by government?
Year in, year out, we have responded to statements that are given by the ministers and we have always presented our alternatives.
For now we have a document that talks about the policy alternatives; it is public information that you can get from the Parliament library.

Well, do you reach out to government leaders on other levels like the ruling party secretary general, the Prime Minister or even the President?

I don’t in any way take the responsibility of political party matters; my role is to coordinate and lead the Opposition that is represented in Parliament.

At some level, we have engaged the Prime Minister. If my party thinks I should engage the Prime Minister on matters of party concern, they have approached me and I have done it.

Sometimes they approach me to be part of a delegation to embassies on issues that they think the party needs to undertake and I have been there.

Very soon we are going to unveil to you what we think will be our strategic plan to guide us, and we will also be launching our alternative policies.

Finally, you have a very small number in Parliament. Do you have any strategy to bring Independents, who are fence sitters, on board and switch them to your side?

Now that is to me, it is not for public consumption. You want to bring them to problems before their terms end. I am having my own engagement with them and you will see it towards the elections.