On 7th August Mr Kasirye the director clerks affairs at Uganda’s parliament put out an internal memo shuffling and redeploying a total of 43 committee clerks.
These are people who manage committees and control the budgets. They head secretariats of committees of parliament. Transferring clerks from one committee to another is common and expected practice in common wealth.
The new speaker Oboth Oboth Markson is a reformist who wants efficiency and a corruption-free parliament to clean up the mess of his predecessor Anita Among’s days. And redeploying clerks is one way Oboth hopes to improve efficiency and minimize committee level corruption.
However, some of the clerks have ganged up with the new speaker’s enemies in order to frustrate some of his reforms. The transfers that were made by Kasirye begin on Oct 1st but some of the affected clerks are already working with their godfathers inside parliament to fail the transfers.
The biggest fight concerns committees which are charged with overseeing parliament. Examples include the committee of legal & parliamentary affairs which processes the budget of parliament and the committee of COSASE which handles the accountability and oversight.
In his wisdom, Mr. Kasirye had moved Mr Webby Bwire from being clerk to COSASE and put him in the committee of legal affairs.
This is being resisted because some of the big people at parliament want him to remain in COSASE so that he can continue confusing and manipulating opposition NUP MP Nkunyingi Muwadda never to summon the accounting officer of parliament to answer to the audit queries captured in the auditor general’s report.
Bwire is a good friend of Muwadda and he has been lobbying the clerk to parliament to keep him happy through being given good trips abroad. This keeps Muwadda happy and not in a hurry to investigate financial management at parliament captured in auditor general’s report.
Its feared that a new committee clerk for COSASE, who is Barungi Merina Bujara, may not be able to tame Muwadda properly to ignore parliament’s audit queries the way Bwire had managed. Bwire is nowadays a powerful man because his wife is an MP.
There is chaos about Bwire being unwilling to move because Barungi, who has been working on the speaker’s table, is excited and badly wants to come to COSASE where there is a lot of eating. She is not prepared to allow being suffocated by Bwire.
There is also trouble concerning PAC central. The new clerk is Mpuuga Rukidi who is supposed to replace Max Komakech, who godfathers want to stay to protect certain accounting officers who are friendly at key agencies of government. Komakech was moved to health committee.
Bwire, who sources say is the most powerful committee clerk, is supposed to replace Stuart Guma Warren at the legal and parliamentary affairs committee but this incumbent is also unhappy about his new committee of defense & internal affairs.
The list of new clerks reflects gender balance, which Oboth Oboth is happy about, because 23 of them are women e.g Saudah Babirye, Harriet Jelian Ocaya, Ida Kusiima, Agatha Akankunda, Rabiiha Chemutai, Jacqueline Muhimbise, Owor Christine, Mujulizi Claire, Eunice Akongo, Taaka Judith, Esther Nadunga, Mariam Nassali, Amero Diana and others.
Sources say should the mafia actors succeed and the committee clerks of especially COSASE and legal/parliamentary affairs don’t change, Oboth Oboth’s reform agenda to have a more efficient and less-corrupt parliament will be greatly impeded.
It’s understood that Oboth Oboth is determined to fight very hard to ensure that those trying to stand in his way don’t succeed.
