The Opposition caucus in Parliament has boycotted parliamentary sittings until MPs Allan Ssewanyana (NUP, Makindye West) and Muhammad Ssegirinya (Kawempe North) are released.
The resolution was reached by a team led by the Leader of the Opposition in Parliament (LOP), Hon Mathias Mpuuga and communicated to journalists at press conference jointly addressed by the Chief Opposition Whip, Hon John Baptist Nambeshe, Bugiri Municipality MP, Hon Asuman Basalirwa and Luweero Woman MP who is also the Shadow Minister for Education, Hon Brenda Nabukenya.
“We condemn the illegal detention of the two MPs and many other Ugandans who are being held for so long without trial,” Nambeshe said adding that, ’we will boycott the plenary sittings of Parliament until the due process of the law is followed in the prosecution of our colleagues and other opposition supporters’.
The move, Nambeshe said, is intended to force the government to respect the rule of law.
“Until the two members and other Ugandans who support change who are in incarceration; some in places we don’t know, are taken through due process, we shall not go back to Parliament and comfortably deliberate on issues when our people are being persecuted,” Nambeshe said.
The development comes a day after Opposition MPs walked out of Parliament in protest of what they termed as government’s failure to offer a satisfactory reason for the brutal re-arrest of Ssewanyana and Ssegirinya moments after they had been granted bail.
Ssewanyana was re-arrested last Thursday while Ssegirinya was re-arrested on Monday outside Kigo prison by armed security operatives.
Hon Basalirwa address the media as Nambeshe looks on
Meanwhile, the Opposition has also rejected President Yoweri Museveni’s push to abolish the requirement to grant bail to suspects.
“We want confirm that we stand by the current provisions in the Constitution. Internationally and regionally; we are party to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that calls for presumption of innocence, we are a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. All those obligations mandate us as a country to ensure that we respect the presumption of innocence and by extension, we uphold the right to apply for bail,” Basalirwa said.
“We will defend the current constitutional provision that entitles anybody accused of an offence to apply for bail and will therefore, not be party to any moves that are intended to remove bail from our law books. The current provisions on bail are sufficient enough to cater for Mr. Museveni’s concerns,” he added.
On Tuesday, Museveni met NRM MPs to sell to them his idea of scrapping the constitutional provision on bail which Basalirwa warned is likely to cast the NRM government in bad light.
“The NRM government will go into history as the first government in the whole world to abolish bail. Not even the Taliban [in Afghanistan], not even the military regime in North Korea or in Myanmar abolished bail. They [NRM] will be the first should they pursue this matter to its conclusion. If Museveni wants to the champion of being unique in that respect, we will not follow him in that uniqueness,” Basalirwa said.
