Appoint new Cabinet to ensure continuity
President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni dissolved cabinet before his May 12 inauguration. PHOTO/FILE
What you need to know:
- The issue: Cabinet appointment
- Our view: So the elephant in the room now is when the President will appoint the new Cabinet to close the existing leadership void that has been in place for the last one month and is slowly turning into a constitutional crisis.
By press time last evening, President Museveni had not appointed his cabinet, a month ever since he constitutionally dissolved it. This means we have had a President without government for the last one month. This has many legal implications.
Lawyers quoted in a Daily Monitor article titled: “Ministers sued for being in office”, warned that any resolutions by ministers after May 12 when Cabinet was dissolved, were null and void and that the same can be successfully challenged in court.
This was because a section of ministers continued to execute their ministerial duties despite having no mandate.
Some ministers such as the outgoing ICT and National Guidance minister, Judith Nabakooba, argued that they could not leave a vacuum. The absence of Cabinet ministers means that certain urgent and highly binding decisions can’t be enforced.
For example, outgoing Health minister, Jane Ruth Aceng could not be incorporated into the Covid-19 Task Force Committee to discuss the way forward for the surging infections.
About a fortnight ago, Speaker of Parliament, Jacob Oulanyah, in one of his maiden speeches, called upon President Museveni to fast-track the appointment of the new Cabinet, arguing that there was government and that the Parliament he was to preside over, could not legislate without Cabinet.
Oulanyah said that Parliament could have commenced its legislative work but can’t do so without a new Cabinet in place.
We join Speaker of Parliament in calling upon the appointing authority to assemble a new Cabinet to ensure continuity of government.
For the last one month, we have had only one arm of government functioning, the Judiciary and yet for the government to be fully operational, all the three arms should be fully functional.
Article 111 (1) of the Constitution, demands that there shall be a Cabinet which shall consist of the President, the Vice President and such number of ministers as may appear to the President to be reasonably necessary for the efficient running of the State.
According to the Constitution, the core functions of the Cabinet shall be to determine, formulate and implement the policy of the government and to perform such other functions as may be conferred by this Constitution or any other law.
So the elephant in the room now is when the President will appoint the new Cabinet to close the existing leadership void that has been in place for the last one month and is slowly turning into a constitutional crisis.
