Africa-Press – Uganda. The Speaker of Parliament, Ms Anita Among has accused members of cabinet of spreading allegations that MPs are often bribed during their legislation process before cautioning the ministers to know their boundaries.
In her opening remarks during Tuesday’s plenary session, Ms Among reiterated that some ministers are often absent from her House and rarely follow proceedings on the floor hence finding themselves trapped into a blame game over Parliamentary decisions.
“I urge the relevant sector ministers to always be present in the House, we cannot say, the House has rejected or the House has been bribed, when you are not in the House. Legislation is done in the House not in cabinet,” Ms Among said.
“All decisions of the legislature are done in utmost good faith, not with any bad intentions, so when we hear members going to discuss and having idle talks in cabinet that members [MPs] are being bribed….., and I’m repeating idle talks, because members are here, why don’t you come and argue in the House? We legislate for this country [instead of] saying we rejected reports, we are not doing anything. If we are not doing anything close Parliament,” she added.
The Speaker made the remarks in reference to the recent media reports that a number of MPs were bribed by government agencies to block their rationalization. For the last two weeks, Parliament has been legislating on the RAPEX Bills in which the government moved to rationalize over 30 agencies and departments.
“Where you have issues about the legislature come and address in the House, don’t address it from where we are not. On issues of RAPEX Bills, we have said do proper analysis that is good for this country…….and if you feel hurt that the RAPEX bills were rejected unfairly, bring them back, the House will still look at them and if it means considering them, the House will still do it,” Ms Among said.
The Speaker further wondered that “I don’t know whether some of you (ministers) were just appointed to come only to see and go and bad mouth” urging the executive to always appreciate the legislative efforts of Parliament as a complement to the executive.
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