Deputy Speaker knows procedures

The Daily Monitor of June 10 carried an opinion by Hellen N. Kawesa with far-reaching insinuations against the integrity of the Deputy Speaker Jacob Oulanyah.
The writer, a civil servant at the level of assistant director of communications at Parliament, is strangely taking to the press to lecture the Deputy Speaker on the Rules of Procedure of Parliament, raising several matters that have created the necessity for this response.

I had earlier read Oulanyah’s interview in Sunday Monitor which gave a chronology of what transpired before he finally decided to attend the plenary. His explanation was devoid of emotions or contradictions. Ms Kawesa began with an attempt to whittle down the Deputy Speaker’s recent attendance of plenary and his being subsequently denied an opportunity to address MPs as intended to “avoid bringing the Office of the Speaker to ridicule.”

Well, she should have known this emanated from the Speaker allowing MPs to discuss the conduct of the Deputy Speaker.

This happened under live media coverage yet the manner in which the discussion on the Deputy Speaker’s conduct, which shot to the proportions of labelling him a ‘betrayer’, clearly offended Rules 107 and 71(2) of the Rules of Procedure and basic tenets of natural justice, which abhors condemning one unheard.

If indeed there was need to safeguard the integrity of the office, would such a discussion be entertained in the first place, especially since it directly tore into the integrity of the Deputy Speaker, who the writer rightly says is a constituent component of the Office of the Speaker?

The same damaging remarks were quickly transplanted to the official Twitter handle of the Speaker, who the writer says is committed to safeguarding the integrity of the office! Is it not a contradiction, therefore, that the same remarks would be further fuelled on social media?

Contrast this with the restraint the Deputy Speaker deployed in responding to the issue.

Whereas he felt wronged and unfairly targeted, he knew that the integrity of the office and by extension Parliament mattered more. The Deputy Speaker officially wrote a letter seeking explanation on the saga, after obtaining the record of the day, to which he was promised that the unfair remarks against his person would be expunged.

He patiently waited. Never mind that those that watched the live proceedings and followed similar posts on social media had already passed judgment against the Deputy Speaker.

When the efforts were not yielding, and the allegations were becoming persistent, the Deputy Speaker took the extraordinary step of attending plenary to seek answers on the forum where the said remarks were made without according him an opportunity to respond.

Intriguingly, the writer suggested that the matter was to be resolved on that day and the statements expunged, and that the Deputy Speaker’s presence was inconsequential.

So, why wasn’t the same brought to the knowledge of the Deputy Speaker beforehand? If indeed the intention was to expunge the unfair remarks entertained against the Deputy Speaker in a “swift, orderly and smart” manner, why did it have to take the Deputy Speaker’s intervention and weeks of silence until his appearance in plenary?

Lastly, the Deputy Speaker’s restraint is well known, and he would be the last person to want to prosecute matters of this kind in the media, which explains his long silence.

Let nothing be done through ambition or conceit. But in lowliness of the mind let each esteem others better than himself.

Col Mwesigye is the MP for Nyabushozi County, Kiruhura District