Nyege-Nyege: When Speaker Among Exposed Her Ignorance of the Principle Application of Separation of Powers

Last week, the Ugandan Speaker of Parliament Rt. Hon Anita Amongi was involved in a very tricky altercation with the Prime Minister, Rt. Hon Robinah Nabbanja over the issue of the social event otherwise known as the Nyege-Nyege festival that is due to take place in Jinja. During the plenary of Parliament, some members made an emotional plea for the Speaker to exercise her powers and stop the event from taking place, by reasoning that it promoted moral decadence amongst the youths in the country.

Without giving time to dissect the pros and cons of the event, the Speaker willingly obliged by insisting that it would only take place over her dead body! When she was faced with some resistance from some members of the August House who regarded it as a tourism and money-making event, she asserted her powers by insisting that ‘nobody can override the authority of the house she presides over’. But the Prime Minister politely insisted that the event will take place after some moral adjustments because people had traveled thousands of miles to attend it. Besides, it was calculated that the event was going to bring in over USD400,000 from the social revelers.

It’s believed that the President also consented for the event to take place. Now the issue had degenerated into a direct alteration between the Speaker of Parliament, who happens to be the head of the legislature, on one hand and the Prime Minister, who represents the executive in the house, on the other hand. In other words, this Nyege-Nyege festival had the net effect of pitting the legislature against the executive. It’s NOT so hard to discern which arm of government wields the authority to make the event happen or not. But during the whole altercation, it became apparent that the Speaker was trying to over-step her mandate.

The principle of separation of powers makes it clear that the Parliament can only legislate laws and not get involved in their application. It roundly means that Parliament cannot interfere with the implementation of the law. If a speaker feels that something must be done, then it can be advisory but not mandatory. This means that she cannot make orders about anything. In this case, the speaker was ignorantly trying to hijack the powers of the executive. It’s the executive that can implement the laws of the land. This obviously means that it was the Prime Minister who was supposed to make orders to stop the Nyege-Nyege festival and not the Speaker of Parliament because she wields demonstrate-able powers.

Unfortunately, Rt. Hon Anita Among seemed to strongly believe that she had the powers to intervene and stop it at all costs, well as NOT. It was very clear that she was ignorant about the working intricacies of government. It’s not a matter of just issuing orders. There is a clear format which guides how government operates. When the legislature makes laws, like it is mandated to do, it’s the executive which implements them, while the judiciary comes in to arbitrate the contradictions that emerge in the process of application of the law. In this case, it’s obvious that the executive has more overriding powers (what we have termed as demonstrate-able power) than all the two other arms of government.

The executive is the only arm of government that implement laws, which explains why it controls the security agencies that include the Prisons, Police and the Army that can execute the orders. The Parliament can play its oversight role and even make recommendations, but they are merely advisory and not necessarily binding. Even the judiciary can only suggest but cannot impose its views on the executive. The executive enjoys overriding powers because it can choose to take or not to take the views, recommendations or suggestions of the legislature and the judiciary, however good they may be.

Enters Rt. Hon. Kadaga

On several occasions, we have witnessed these clashes of egos between the heads of these arms of government. At one time, the former Speaker of Parliament, Rt. Hon Rebecca Kadaga convened the house and tabled a motion that intended to lift the lockdown that had been imposed by President Museveni. The members of Parliament debated the pros and cons of the lockdown and rightly concluded that it was simply making hard for the citizens. After some thorough debate the MPs generated consensus that the lockdown should be lifted to allow Ugandans resume normal life. You could hear from their emotional presentations that they believed that they had the powers to remove the lockdown, OH DEAR! But the President rejected the idea and reasoned that they were making recommendations that were simply advisory and not mandatory.

There was no way Kadaga could cause the lifting of the lockdown unless the executive agrees to do so. There seems to be systematic ignorance of how government operates. Even Rt. Hon Kadaga, who is a lawyer by profession and had been part of the constituent assembly that drafted the 1995 constitution, seemed to override her mandate. Although they all serve the same country, the principal is that the three arms of government cannot perform the same functions and are very distinct in the way they perform their cardinal roles. Therefore, the clash between the Speaker Anita Among and the Prime Minister Robinah Nabbanja was totally uncalled for. It should have been resolved amicably without issuing conflicting orders. But most important of all, the senior politicians must first understand the roles of their dockets. Otherwise, the continued ignorance of the functions of government will continue to put the country into unnecessary jeopardy and catastrophic embarrassment.