President Yoweri Kaguta Tibuhaburwa Museveni is on a warpath in his renewed fight against corruption, warning that whoever is involved is going to ‘face my full force’.
A tough-talking Museveni said corruption was failing the country’s development agenda and asked the newly elected Members of Parliament to support the fight against corruption over the next five-year term.
“I am told there is corruption even in Parliament. How can this be? I am going to crash corruption and whoever is involved in corruption is going to face my full force,” President Museveni warned.
The President was speaking during a meeting he held with the 59 newly-elected Independent National Resistance Movement (NRM)-leaning Members of Parliament at State House Entebbe on Friday.
The majority of them became independent after losing in the party primaries.
Museveni previously defended the government’s slow response to corruption cases, saying the vice had become complex with educated people in public offices making it almost impossible to pin them without evidence.
He also appealed to the newly-elected legislators to support the government and put an end to the rampant land evictions by implementing the recommendations of the Catherine Bamugemereire Land Commission, noting that the land evictions had made the NRM very unpopular, especially in the Buganda region.
“We cannot continue like that, where citizens are turned into serfs in their homeland,” he said.
President Museveni with Independent NRM-leaning MPs of the 11th Parliament at State House, Entebbe on Friday, May 21, 2021
President Museveni with Independent NRM-leaning MPs of the 11th Parliament at State House, Entebbe on Friday, May 21, 2021
President Museveni urged the MPs to work towards finding solutions to the problems of the electorate rather than concentrating on political populism, warning that failure to do that, the political class would be a great disappointment to the masses and risked being punished by the electorate.
He urged them to focus more on how to transform the majority of Ugandans from subsistence agriculture to commercial and profit-oriented agriculture to better their incomes.
To pull this off, MPs needed to be model farmers themselves and also support the government to have a bigger budget for wealth creation and poverty eradication programmes.
Once production is boosted, the MPs should support the integration of East Africa and African markets since the local market is not enough, added the President.
He further urged legislators to support the implementation of the UPE and USE programmes, noting that “free education for the children of the poor should free” in public schools.
Museveni appealed to them to work with the government to prioritise budgeting for the key infrastructure of the economy, such as roads, railway, electricity and clean water supply. He said Parliament needs to correctly budget for the maintenance of feeder roads to ease the transportation of goods and services to the market.
He further asked them to support enhanced budgeting for the defence and security sector because peace is the backbone of development.
“You can see that Uganda has 2.5 million refugees. This is because all of them are running away from insecurity in their own countries and we cannot risk that.’
In their memorandum that was presented by Rushenyi MP Naome Kabasharira, the Independent NRM-leaning legislators decried the corruption and mismanagement of elections that was exhibited during the NRM party primaries that forced most of the party cadres to stand as independents.
They requested the President as party chairman to institute a committee to reconcile the many members of the party who conflicted during the elections.
The group also pledged to work with NRM and the President in line with the party manifesto to develop the country.
Among those who attended the meeting included the NRM secretary general, Justine Kasule Lumumba, and treasurer Rose Namayanja.
