Speaker race: Kadaga launches, Oulanyah watches

After the Easter holidays, the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) MPs-elect for the 11th Parliament are expected to have a retreat at the National Leadership Institute in Kyankwanzi District, where they will be addressed by President Museveni.

Although on paper the retreat, which will take place after the MPs-elect have undergone a quarantine in Entebbe, has been presented as “an initiation procedure”, the debate of who will be the Speaker and Deputy Speaker of Parliament is expected to take centre stage.  
Mr Jacob Oulanyah, who has been Deputy Speaker for the last 10 years, and now wants to replace Ms Rebecca Kadaga, according to sources within his camp, is going to use the Kyankwanzi sanctuary to concretise his support among the NRM diehards.   

“We are going to use the retreat to just increase our support because we have already done a lot of mobilisation,” Mr Linos Ngompek, the Kibanda North MP-elect, who is one of the top Oulanyah mobilisers, said. 
“We are going to reach out to more Woman MPs because it seems that is where we might have a problem.”  

Mr Oulanyah’s mobilisation has been more covert than overt, with his team hardly coming out to say as much as those who back Ms Kadaga have. The contrast is even more pronounced going by the way the two principals have conducted their campaigns so far. 
Ms Kadaga used the occasion of a function to launch her campaigns at Speke Resort Munyonyo in Kampala to also launch a tirade against Mr Oulanyah, who she accused of ducking handling crucial and controversial business in the House. 

She picked on the handling of the Bill that led to the removal of age limits for presidential candidates, which she accuses Mr Oulanyah of dodging and singles out as her biggest accomplishment for this term.
Asked to respond to Ms Kadaga’s accusations, Mr Oulanyah declined the seeming invitation to a verbal war, in some cases explaining himself while insisting that the decision of who will be the next Speaker will be made by their party. 

“Those are lies” is all he said when asked to respond to Ms Kadaga’s barbs about him ducking controversial business. 
While appearing on NBS Television’s Frontline programme on Thursday night, Mr Oulanyah stuck to the same line, placing his faith in the party and refusing to say what he would do if the party processes decided against him being Speaker. 
Away from the cameras, however, Mr Oulanyah and his team remain optimistic that this is his time since Ms Kadaga has served 10 years, which some NRM members say is what has been set as the limit. 

When Mr Oulanyah tried to be Speaker five years ago, Ms Kadaga accused him of being impatient, saying he needed to wait for her to serve a second term just as she waited for now Vice President Edward Ssekandi to serve 10 years before she replaced him as Speaker. This is a line to which Mr Oulanyah is keen to hold Ms Kadaga and is working the party organs to back him on. 
            
NRM leaders have had a problem explaining who exactly they will support for the post of Speaker, and this manifested last weekend when the party’s secretary general, Ms Justine Lumumba, while commissioning the Covid-19 vaccination programme in the eastern district of Mayuge, said how the party will support candidates on merit. 

“We have been supporting Ms Kadaga on merit not because she comes from Busoga sub-region,” Ms Lumumba explained after being asked by one of the speakers to come out explicitly and show how the party is backing Ms Kadaga. “Even this time, the one we shall be supporting will be because of merit, not because of his or her region.”

By the time the anticipated Kyankwanzi retreat is held, the animosity between the two warring camps is expected to have reached a fever pitch, with Ms Kadaga having launched her campaign team.
Although Mr Oulanyah has over the years insisted that the Speaker had tried to duck presiding over the belligerent sessions, Ms Kadaga, at the launch of her campaign, came with another narrative basically characterising her deputy as a coward.

“First of all, it started when I was out of the country, I was in America, then on my way back, I stopped in the UK, The Teso [Iteso] had invited me with their king [chief] to speak to [the Iteso] in the diaspora,” Ms Kadaga explained. 
“While I was there, my deputy rang me, ‘come back since you know there is something which I can’t handle’. I said what do you mean you can’t handle?  He said ‘no.  ...no… you come back’.  I said I am doing some work here but he said ‘it is very urgent and I am not able to manage’. So I came. I came straight into the fire. For two weeks, he had failed to hold Parliament… he did not want to handle the age limit. He was waiting for me.”

It is almost four years since the elite Special Forces Command (SFC) soldiers attacked a parliamentary session that was debating the lifting of the presidential age limits and in the process beat up mainly Opposition MPs. Ms Kadaga, who chaired the session, seems to know that wounds are yet to heal and she sought to cast herself as a heroine who had nothing to do with the onslaught which she said happened while her deputy had taken cover. 
“The first day we did battle. Members tried to stop us from working, I left them. We came back the second day; they did something. People came with pistols but I said no, we need to finish with this matter. So I handled it. My deputy ran away. He ran away. He ran away. Out of the country. Far away.”

What Ms Kadaga didn’t bother to explain was that she suspended six Opposition MPs, accusing them of fomenting trouble in the House. The suspended MPs – Ibrahim Ssemujju Nganda (Kira Municipality), Allan Ssewanyana (Makindye West), Gerald Karuhanga (Ntungamo Municipality), Jonathan Odur (Erute County South, Anthony Akol (Kilak North County ) and Mubarak Manyangwa (Kawempe South) – responded by suing  Ms Kadaga at the  High Court’s Civil Division, saying her acts were illegal and should not be repeated in future. The High Court declined to handle the matter, telling the MPs to take their case to the Constitutional Court for constitutional interpretation.

Ms Kadaga has also moved not only to dismiss the suggestion that her party’s Central Executive Committee (CEC) will have the final say on who will be the Speaker of the 11th Parliament and has also rolled out a plan to court the political opposition.
Despite the fact that Ms Kadaga has forged an alliance with MPs from various political parties and Independents, Mr Oulanyah’s campaign machinery, which is mainly banking on the NRM support, insists they are out to shock the Speaker.  
“You can see 66 people attended the launch and yet the mobilisation was done from last week. So people know what to do. Wait and see the surprise,” Mr Yorke Alioni Odria, the MP-elect for Aringa South constituency, said.  
“She has done her part. She has been in Parliament for 30 years. She has been Deputy Speaker for 10 years. She has been Speaker for 10 years. That’s enough.”

When Mr Oulanyah tried to challenge for the speakership in 2016, Ms Kadaga implored her party to instead back her such that they are in tandem with the previous precedent which had seen Edward Kiwanuka Ssekandi, the current Vice President, who served as Speaker for 10 years. “I think the party should be consistent,” Ms Kadaga said five years ago. “They were able to give my predecessor 10 years. They shouldn’t change the rules because it’s me. They should also be consistent. The President and Vice President are men. The Chief Justice and Deputy Chief Justice are men.  Where do they want the women to go? We are citizens of this country and we must serve our space and we shall not allow anybody to push us out.”

The MPs now canvassing votes for Mr Oulanyah believe it is time for Ms Kadaga to respect her word.
“When Mr Oulanyah tried to stand during the last term, CEC sat him down and implored him to let her have her second term. He respected it with humility. Now it is his turn. He has been elected as the [NRM] vice-chairperson for northern Uganda,” Mr Odria said. 
 
He added: “He moved in every district of the north and West Nile region. He moved to every radio station and he told the people the achievements of the government, which they had never known and he delivered the northern region. Without the vote of the north and West Nile region, the President wasn’t going to win. Why not reward him?  What has Kadaga done? She didn’t deliver the eastern region, not even Busoga.”

Kadaga and the Opposition
On Thursday morning, Ms Kadaga’s campaign team dispatched messages to the MPs-elect attached to the Opposition’s biggest parties: National Unity Platform (NUP), which has 61 MPs, and the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), which has 33 MPs, to attend her campaign launch. 
Indeed, NUP’s Bashir Kazibwe Mbaziira, who ousted FDC’s Mubarak Munyagwa from the Kawempe South seat, journalist-turned politician Joyce Bagala, who ousted Information minister Judith Nabakooba from the Mityana Woman MP seat, Christine Kaaya Nakimweero, who defeated NRM’s chief whip Ruth.

Nankabirwa for the Kiboga Woman MP slot and Mr David Lukyamuzi Kalwanga, who retained his Busujju County seat, attended the meeting and indicated their willingness to support Ms Kadaga.   
Officially, NUP hasn’t declared who precisely they are going to support in this race, which has been complicated by the decision by FDC’s Ibrahim Ssemujju Nganda (Kira Municipality) to throw his hat in the race, saying since he belongs to the Opposition’s FDC, it is quiet automatic that all Opposition-leaning MPs will be voting for him since Mr Oulanyah and Ms Kadaga belong to the ruling party.
 
NUP spokesperson Joel Ssenyonyi, who is the MP-elect for the newly-created Nakawa West constituency, was among those who received Ms Kadaga’s invitation but due to what he called “other commitments”, he could not attend. “It is true I received the message calling me for the meeting, although they never indicated why we were being called,” Mr Ssenyonyi said. “But we are yet to decide on who we shall support for the Speakership. We shall be telling you who we shall be supporting at an appropriate time.”

Although Mr Ssenyonyi claims they are yet to make a decision, sources say NUP leader Robert Kyagulanyi, alias Bobi Wine, has already surreptitiously given NUP MP-elect the green light to vote Ms Kadaga. 
Of the clearest indication that NUP supports Ms Kadaga is the fact that Jeema party president Asuman Basalirwa, who formed a coalition with NUP during elections, has openly supported Ms Kadaga.

“I’m team Kadaga,” Mr Basalirwa, the Bugiri Municipality MP, recently said on the floor of the House. 
Mr Kyagulanyi’s relationship with Ms Kadaga has been subject to much speculation and it all started last year when the singer–turned-politician told voters in Ms Kadaga’s home district of Kamuli how the Speaker is his distant auntie and that once he is elected as President, Ms Kadaga will be tapped for a position in the imagined NUP government.  
  
“Please tell our Speaker, who is also our ‘aunt’, that this is not about family, this is real.
Tell her that she is good but we can give her an even bigger role. I will give her a better role in my government,” Mr Kyagulanyi said in December last year.   
After attending Ms Kadaga’s meeting, Mr Kalwanga told journalists that the strongest signal that NUP was backing Ms Kadaga was the fact that Mr Ssenyonyi was among those who were expected to attend and his name was read out by the event’s organisers. 

In respect to the FDC, Ms Cecilia Ogwal (Dokolo Woman MP) and Mr Francis Mwijukye (Buhweju County) attended Ms Kadaga’s meeting, but also it seems she has the support of other FDC MPs, including Mr Godfrey Atkins Katusabe (Bukonzo County West), Mr Harold Tonny Muhindo (Bukonzo County East) and  Dr Timothy Lusala Batuwa (Jinja South West). 
It remains to be seen how FDC will react to this but Mr Ssemujju had indicated earlier that any Opposition MP who supports anyone from the NRM for Speakership would mean that he or she is a mole.

In her speech on Wednesday, which was clearly intended to win over the Opposition, Ms Kadaga cast herself as an independent person, who normally goes beyond the interests of the NRM, her party. 
“I represent the will of the people,” she said. “Many times, I have had to stand between the State and the population. For me, I am guided by the interests of the population.”

Despite claiming that she acted as a bulwark between the independence of Parliament and the overreaches of Mr Museveni when she was campaigning to be re-elected as NRM’s second national vice-chairperson last year, Ms Kadaga said she deserves the position because she acted as an enabler of Mr Museveni’s move to edit the presidential age limit clause in the Constitution.

“In very difficult circumstances, I facilitated the amendment of the Constitution under Article 102 to enable continuity of the NRM ideology, but most importantly, our national chairperson to continue leading the country after the end of the present term. I have demonstrated my commitment to the party throughout…I have enacted all the necessary legislation and I have been available for work in the party throughout,” Ms Kadaga told the NRM’s CEC at State House Entebbe.

Ms Kadaga’s campaign team also reflects her key message:  unifier of the ruling NRM and the Opposition. It has an NRM team led by Mr Alex Byarugaba (Isingiro South), Mr Gabriel Okoro (Okoro County),  Ms Sarah Opendi (Tororo Woman), Mr Robert Migadde (Buvuma Islands) and Mr Geoffrey (Busia Municipality). Those from the Opposition are FDC’s Ogwal, and Mr Gilbert Olanya (Kilak County).