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On Wednesday, Deputy Speaker Thomas Tayebwa presided over a meeting of the Business Committee of Parliament which was attended by all newly designated Committee Chairpersons; the Prime Minister Robinah Nabbanja, LoP Joel Senyonyi, Opposition Chief Whip JB Nambeshe, Government Chief Whip Hamson Obua and others.
During the meeting, tempers flared repeatedly as Nabbanja directed a lot of anger and resentment towards Obua who she severally rebuked for hijacking her budget as leader of government business. There is a thin line between being GCW and leader of government business. Whereas Nabbanja, as Prime Minister, is technically head of government business in Parliament, Obua is GCW and the leader of government business defacto because he is the one who does most of the work because being Prime Minister, Nabbanja is too busy to personally do all this work.
Operationally, the Leader of Government business office is supposed to be ran by the GCW to whom the relevant budget of several billions also gets allocated. This money is what Obua uses to facilitate regional whips who get Shs1.2m per month and even ruling NRM caucus executive members who every month are facilitated with Shs2m to enable them do caucus-related work. Obua also uses the money to conduct training of staff attached to the office of GCW and that of leader of government business.
Nabbanja used the Wednesday meeting to quarel while making it clear that its unfair for Obua, who already has his budget as GCW, to monopolise the leader of government business budget to her total exclusion. She said she was tired of being deliberately excluded from the running of the leader of government business office yet it belongs to her as Prime Minister of Uganda mandated to coordinate all the executive business at Parliament.
She directed a lot of resentment towards Obua and his staff as Joel Senyonyi and other opposition members present looked on in total shock and consternation. It was only Nambeshe who occasionally spoke in defense of Premier Nabbanja. The Prime Minister also spoke about the regional workshop the GCW office recently organized in Mbale and was attended by several NRM leaders including MPs serving as regional whips, MPs and local government leaders from the entire Eastern region.
Nabbanja demanded to know how the decision to allocate and expend so much money onto that Mbale event was taken by the GCW office without adequately involving her. She demanded to know why some of the money meant to run and operate the office of leader of government business had to be used yet for her never gets facilitated.
The Prime Minister, who has previously exhibited discomfort seeing the President communicating to Obua more often than he does to her in order to update himself on the happenings at Parliament, also asserted that the coordination of Ministers while preparing to respond to Parliament-related queries must be left to her and she made it clear that the same group have no business being coordinated by Obua as GCW.
She asserted that, because she is technically the leader of government business, she must be allowed to be the contact or link person between Parliament and Cabinet or executive. Tayebwa, who was chairing the meeting, tried to correct and explain to her that the coordination of Ministers and Executive members on matters to do with Parliament has to conveniently be left to be handled by the GCW since, as PM, she is too busy but Nabbanja objected vowing not to ever allow that to happen. She perceived this as an attempt by Obua to undermine her and weaken her office.
Nabbanja was told there is no way she can say all she said about the Mbale regional workshop for the Eastern regional whips and be tolerated when everybody else, including Nambeshe, was saying the event was well organized, well-attended and that it added value to the leaders who attended and participated in the same.
Clerk to Parliament Adolf Mwesige was also there in the meeting and he too didn’t escape the Nabbanja wrath especially after he made it clear to her that there is no way she would continue demanding being allowed to control the leader of government business office’s budget without ending up being seen as interfering in accounting officers work. On feeling cornered, Nabbanja declared “I know what I’m going to do,” something many construed as threatening to escalate the matter to the President.
Having failed to get enough support from members present in her bid to make Obua look bad, the Premier eventually stormed out of the meeting and left the Conference Hall where the meeting took place. Deputy Speaker Tayebwa had all along been trying, in vain, to deescalate the belligerent exchange between Obua and Premier Nabbanja. It remains doubtful if the defending of government or executive positions or business on the floor of Parliament will be improving anytime soon given the ever-growing belligerence and mistrust between the two Principals namely Robinah Nabbanja and Hamson Obua.