POA’s token of appreciation

He adds: “We are going to raise the issue of LOP. We cannot accuse NRM of committing illegalities and then we do the same. This appointment is illegal.”

However, by press time, Latigo had told The Independent that his team had not received any official communication for them to go ahead and examine the rules of procedure of parliament.

“We do not have anything like minority leader in the laws of Uganda,” Latigo noted, “That is meaningless communication.”

As one of the moderates in FDC, Latigo nonetheless summed up his frustration with the changes. “Any change which is intended not to improve the situation but a reaction to the existing circumstances is unfortunate,” he told The Independent in a phone interview on Aug.6.

“For every action,” he warned, “there is an equal and opposite reaction. So we will not take this lying down.”

Role of committee chairperson

According to Hippo Twebaze, who has researched parliament over the years, heading a committee requires the chairperson to have substantive knowledge to be able to scrutinize government business as some of the reports are written in the language that an ordinary MP may not understand.

He also says that an MP who is not knowledgeable is likely to underperform because some of the accountability requires one to do extensive research and investigations into matters.

According to Twebaze, while there is an argument that committees have technical staff who are supposed to research and enable MPs understand the issues, it is not enough because a leader must be able to understand things at a different level.

He says the inability of MPs to understand issues explains why some MPs choose to discontinue ongoing investigations that are already before committee simply because the chairperson has the liberty to lose interest in an issue. Twebaze also says it would be a good thing if leaders were chosen from committees where they have been members, so that they do not start from scratch.

Apart from this, Twebaze commended the outgoing LoP, Winnie Kiiza for succeeding in coordinating the opposition MPs and articulating issues on the floor of parliament.

Despite this, he noted that one you cannot analyze the performance of LOP as an individual. “It always has to do with the collective performance of all members of the opposition,” Tumwebaze noted, “However good a LOP may be, his/her effort may not be easily recognized if there is no cooperation with other members of the team.”

For observers, however, the biggest issue for Amuriat might not be over the performance of his new appointees but over the impact his decision might have over the party.

Muntu who came before him was able to contain the rifts within the party by tolerating the group opposed to him. By firing the group opposed to him, Amuriat might have confirmed concerns that his group is not keen on working with those with divergent views.

Outside the FDC, some say, Amuriat might have done himself a favour by looking at how President Museveni has continued to reach out to those opposed to him and even appointed some like Betty Amongi, the wife of Jimmy Akena, the party president of Uganda People’s Congress (UPC) and the son of his erstwhile foe, former President Apollo Milton Obote.

However, the same way only Amuriat knows what stakes he was dealing with by the time he chose to make the controversial changes, only time will tell whether he was right or wrong.