When my lovely brother, Rt Hon Markson Jackson Oboth Oboth, won the parliamentary Speaker race, I wrote my polite advice urging him to move with a new broom to enable him to clean Parliament from the mess his predecessor left. I knew Rt Hon Oboth would face a lot of challenges, and in case he didn’t act by cleaning the dust that was left by his predecessor, his work would be hard.
He started very well. Parliament is very lively, and Ugandans are now paying attention to watch Parliament proceedings on their television sets, unlike those days when nobody wanted even to mention the Parliament of Uganda because what was happening inside that House was nothing other than stealing.
Rt Hon Oboth quickly slashed the Speaker’s budget and allocated the money to the committees, which everyone was very happy about. But to me, I knew the looters within Parliament would not be happy. Of course, they were not happy.
Now, when I read what has been published by one of the media agencies about what is happening in Parliament, it gives me reason to conclude and again advise my brother, the Rt Hon Speaker, to step up and smash those weevils planted to destroy your legacy.
Any clerk who refuses to be transferred to another docket, he or she is a thief, because why are they refusing to be transferred? I would advise you, my brother the Speaker, to fire all those clerks who have refused to be transferred. Let them get jobs in other institutions where they will not be transferred.
Please don’t take that as something simple. They are after failing your administration, and if you keep quiet about it, that’s the end of your legacy.
You started by reducing the number of police deployed in Parliament, and that has saved Uganda’s taxpayers’ money. So please get new clerks because already those ones have been contaminated for a long time. They will not change; instead, they will expose your weakness to the previous Parliament regime.
The writer is the Senior Veteran Journalist.
