Omar Kezimbira <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
2 ministers disown Cabinet on kings
By Gerald Walulya
Sept 23, 2004 - Monitor
PARLIAMENT — Two ministers have disowned a Cabinet proposal in the White Paper to give Parliament powers to depose traditional leaders in case they contravened the Constitution.
NO NO NO: Tim Lwanga (L) and Ssemakula Kiwanuka at Parliament yesterday (Photo by John Nsimbe) Ethics Minister, Mr Tim Lwanga, and Luweero Triangle State Minister, Prof Ssemakula Kiwanuka, told The Monitor yesterday at Parliament they could not remember discussing the said proposal in any Cabinet meeting on the White Paper.
“I don’t remember discussing that proposal. It was probably discussed when I was absent,” Ssemakula said.
“There is no way I could have approved such a proposal. We have never discussed it and I have never heard about it. In fact it’s news to me. It was probably a typing error,” Lwanga, who is also the chairman of the Buganda Parliamentary caucus, said.Justice Minister, Ms Janat Mukwaya, told Parliament on Tuesday the government thought subjecting traditional leaders to Parliament was a necessary move to check them who, prior to this provision, were above the law.
Lwanga said when he heard Mukwaya reading this recommendation from the White Paper he was surprised like many other MPs.
“I was shocked to hear that. I will vote against it. It was probably entrenched in the White Paper by lawyers who made final touches,” Lwanga said.
Information State Minister Dr James Nsaba Buturo dismissed claims by his colleagues as false. “It is not true that this issue was not discussed in Cabinet. The discussions on the White Paper have been protracted. At a time when we revisited some of these issues some members were absent. At no time was the Cabinet represented in full,” Buturo said.
He criticised the two ministers for denying a position taken by Cabinet yet they are bound by its collective responsibility. He said the government worked under pressure to get the White Paper out, which resulted in producing a document, whose details some of the ministers had not appreciated.
© 2004 The Monitor Publications
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