Inside Kadaga, Oulanyah race for Speaker

CEC sway

Cecilia Ogwal, a veteran opposition MP, says the Speaker race is almost entirely up to Museveni and NRM. “It’s the President and CEC to decide. His words and his direction are the guiding principle on the matter,” she told The Independent.

Unlike most MPs, Ogwal did not want to join the partisan fray the race has taken. “Oulanyah is my son, Kadaga is my sister. I don’t want to begin taking sides.”

She added, “The dynamics of this race are different from the one in 2016. All the women MPs were saying we cannot allow a female Speaker to serve one term yet the male ones served two terms. That issue was resolved.”

Ogwal, a member of the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), said the race as it stands now is inevitably for the ruling party to manage. “It’s up to them to guide their political cadres. They are a big bloc when it comes to voting.”

The Dokolo Woman MP said even for the FDC, the situation is “quite vague” because the party has not yet designed a position. “The party has not sat to guide us on the matter.”

NRM maintains a super majority in parliament leaving the handful of opposition parties with almost no say on who become Speaker and Deputy.

In the 2016 race, NRM CEC advised Oulanyah to back down and allow Kadaga serve a second term. Museveni also had to intervene personally in the deputy speaker race by nudging the NRM caucus to vote for Oulanyah who was facing a stiff challenge from Nsereko.

Joel Senyonyi, the MP-elect for Nakawa West and spokesperson for National Unity Platform (NUP) says the party has been occupied with the presidential election petition and abductions of its supporters. He says NUP is yet to have a party position on the matter. NUP is the largest opposition party in the next parliament and will have 61 MPs.

Kadaga Oulanyah past rivalry

Kadaga and her deputy of ten years have had a frosty relationship. In the past, Oulanyah has accused Kadaga of abruptly leaving contentious debates and bills in parliament for him. Their 2016 face off added more fuel to the fire. The quarrel of the two parliament leaders escalated a month ago when Kadaga told MPs during a plenary session that Oulanyah went on a foreign trip late 2019 without notifying her.

Kadaga said she was due for travel at the same time. Their absence left parliament rudderless for a few weeks until Kadaga returned. She told MPs that afternoon that it was due to that incident that she did not allow Oulanyah to chair parliament sessions because he had abdicated his duties.

However their rivalry was already being felt in other parliamentary activities. During the Commonwealth Parliamentary Conference in September 2019, Kadaga as chair of the conference sidelined Oulanyah. Sources say at the time, Oualanyah was not in charge of any specific committee or role. The only thing closest to a role the deputy speaker performed was leading the Ugandan delegation in the main arena on the day of opening the conference. Oulanyah declined media interviews throughout the conference.

In a television interview on NTV on March 18, Oulanyah steered clear of any questions about the time the army invaded parliament during a debate on the presidential age limit in September 2017. “I was not the one chairing” was his response to the ugly scenes of soldiers physically removing opposition members of parliament at the time. A few months later, the House voted to amend the constitution to remove the presidential age limit.

However Kadaga who was presiding over parliament at the time used the incident as a campaign platform during the NRM primaries in 2020 as she plotted for a comeback as NRM second national vice person. “I delivered the presidential age limit to NRM” she boasted.

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