Parliament fails to sit due to absence of speakers

Parliament failed to sit on Thursday following the absence of both the speaker, Rebecca Kadaga and her deputy Jacob Oulanyah.

On Wednesday, Kadaga adjourned a plenary to Thursday to discuss the contentious issue of the Jinja express highway. However, there was no sitting on Thursday as both speakers were absent. Parliament's acting director of communications Hellen Kaweesa said that the deputy speaker is in Kigali, Rwanda attending the African, Caribbean and Pacific-European Union conference while the speaker had a state function which she had not anticipated would take long.

The opposition chief whip Ibrahim Semujju Nganda called for the establishment of a panel of speakers so that the house doesn't fail to sit because of the absence of one or two speakers. He says the action of the speakers is an indication of indiscipline.

"It is not the number of speakers that is going to solve the problems in parliament, it is the discipline. Even if you have 20 speakers who are going to adjourn parliament when it is already inside or who are going call MPs and they tell you today there is not sitting, that will change nothing," said Ssemujju.

 

"People ought to respect parliament as a public institution, people ought to be accountable. The speakers are supposed to be as accountable as any other MP...Parliament must not be adjourned at the leisure of the speaker. If you begin running parliament at the program of the speaker or deputy then there will be no parliament." he added. 

According to Semujju, it is unprecedented for parliament not to sit because the speakers are absent.