Bermuda Speaker cautions Ugandans against quitting their jobs for politics

The Speaker of Bermuda Parliament Dennis Lister has cautioned Ugandans interested in running for political office to think twice before quitting their jobs.

While meeting Ugandans who once worked in Bermuda, at Skyz Hotel last evening, Mr Lister advised that before joining politics, people should establish themselves to a level where their families can survive when things falls apart.

“People should never give up their jobs to run for political office. You are serving at the mercy of an individual and if you and that individual fall out, your family suffers,” he said.

Lister who is in Uganda for the 64th Commonwealth Parliamentary Conference, however advised that, “they should keep some sort of income, because once you lose your job as a parliamentarian, you will then put the government on pressure to retain you.”

According to Uganda’s Parliamentary elections act 2001, a person elected to Parliament when he or she is a member of a local government council or holds a public office shall resign the office before assuming the office of Member of Parliament.

This is however not the case in Bermuda, a small country in the Carribean with a total population of 65,441 people.

Lister says legislators in Bermuda are encouraged to establish themselves jobwise before running for political office.

“We are a small community. So the opportunity to re-establish oneself or get reconnected jobwise is also limited. If you give your job up today, it is going to be filled up immediately and if you lose your position in parliament the following week, it will be hard to get back,” he says.

He notes that most of the legislators in his country run their own businesses.

“I have seen a lot of people get excited because they got elected and they give up their job. Many of us run our own businesses. Even when you don’t have an employer, you have to strike a balance with your private business.”

Asked what he thinks about the idea of quitting one’s job for politics, Kim Shawn Hubert, another legislator from Bermuda said, “I would never give up my job for politics. I am going to retire from politics and you always return to your trade. When you give it up, you return to zero and your family suffers.”

The legislators are in the country to attend the ongoing Commonwealth Parliamentary Conference.
The event kicked off this morning at the Speke Resort Munyonyo with closed meetings of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (CPA) regional secretaries.

Bermuda relations with Uganda
Though Uganda and Bermuda have no official diplomatic relations, Bermuda first opened doors to skilled Ugandans in the early 2000s, in an effort to bring more people of colour into the country.
“Wanting to expose people who come into Bermuda to look like us as a native community, in the early 2000s, an effort was put in place to try an bring more people of colour into Bermuda who could reflect the Bermudan native, the African continent was looked at and Ugandans have been part of that community,” Lister says.

Andrew Kigozi and Johnson Mugulusi who were among the first Ugandans to work in Bermuda reveal that they were just young people throwing their CVs on random recruitment websites when a International recruitment firm contacted them in 2005.

“I was working with PWC at the time and I found the opportunity through an international recruitment firm. In the first interview, they were just trying to gauge whether I was ready to move and the next morning, I found an email informing me that I had got the job,” Mr Kigozi said.

The two worked in Bermuda for two years and have since returned to Uganda into privacy consultancy.

Ugandans living in Bermuda and those that previously worked there hosted Bermuda representatives at a dinner at Skyz Hotel in Kampala last evening, as a way of strengthening the bond between the two countries.