Members of parliament on the opposition side moved out of today’s plenary sitting after the speaker of parliament R.t Hon. Thomas Tayebwa failed to address most of their complaints a number of which included his reversed decision of not playing their video on the screens of parliament in response to the minister of state for internal affairs, suspension of their members from house for 3days and a ban imposed against the media from live coverages of the proceedings in the house.
Speaking to press after walking out of today’s sitting, the leader of opposition Hon. Mathias Mpuuga expressed concerns over yesterday’s decision that was reversed by the speaker of parliament R.t Hon. Thomas Tayebwa of not playing the video that the opposition would base on to respond to the statement that was issued by government regarding recent operations by security agencies on members of the National Unity platform including party Principal Robert kyagulanyi.
“Yesterday we patiently waited and received a statement from the state minister for internal affairs as we all know it was equivocal as they are trying to patronise the opposition in the way that statement was made including in shiding us in what we are supposed to do our work, we thought we would make a response on it yesterday the video we requested for was never played the speaker changed his motivational and therefore changed the goal posts and the video was never played meaning that their was a deliberate attempt to frustrate our response to the statement made by the minister.
Additionally, the leader of opposition in parliament also said that the decision to suspend his members from the house yesterday showed high levels of impunity, stressing that it was only aiming towards them leaving out the ruling side.
“The suspension of our own members 5 members ofcourse we have some serious reservations that in the house that was full of fire on both sides, but the speaker was constrained to only see one side of the house and therefore only the opposition members were suspended, we take a deception we have much respect to the speaker but we take a deception from the choice of suspensions our belief and conviction is and remains that if there's going to be suspensions they would really cut across.” He said
Regarding a ban imposed on media companies namely; Ntv and NBS from the live coverages of the house proceedings Mpuuga said the decission was aimed at serving the vested interests of government citing examples from the passed incidents when the same decisions were made for example an attack on parliament.
“two televisions that normally broadcast house proceedings live have been switched off today, they’ve been denied access to the portal that is Ntv and NBS tv. I think that is a very very serious mischief that probably somebody wanted to do something in the dark and recall the attack on parliament when it happened in 2017 all communication was interfered with, so they never captured how we were captured, how we were being strangled in the basement of parliament.” Said mpuuga
He further revealed how their were presence of an known persons in parliament with amunition which he said is against the rules of parliament. However, he said that upon asking the speaker on the matter he said he never deployed any of the said intruders. It's upon this that he decided to withdraw the opposition from today's sitting until tomorrow.
“if other forces have invaded parliament and they have decided to deploy themselves, then I keep away my members for safety on-top of other matters that I have raised for which we are not convinced the way they were handled, we have notified the speaker that we shall be back tomorrow in parliament upon which I will make a request to the speaker to make a wide range statement on things relating to governance and human rights in this country.” He said
To sport freeman News Agency financially: 0775 108 238/ 0708168313.
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