{UAH} Allan/Pojim/WBK: Cold calculations inform President’s Cabinet choice
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Cold calculations inform President's Cabinet choice
Posted Thursday, June 16 2016 at 01:00
The dust has barely settled on President Museveni's first raft of Cabinet nominees. Parliament is busy processing the appointments with gusto. After some name calling from the MPs who missed on the list, the President rushed a resolution to Parliament to increase the size of Cabinet to 32 Cabinet ministers and 49 ministers of state.
This calculation gives the President some more cushion in the House, which has grown large and unpredictable. In the Jacob Oulanyah-Muhammad Nsereko contest for Deputy Speaker, the majority of the 115 votes Nsereko picked up were from NRM ranks. The Opposition mostly voted for Oulanyah and their brown envelopes were notably bigger than the Shs5 million given to NRM politicians to prepare for swearing-in.
In the last week after the names were published, one of Uganda's oldest parties, UPC, has been rocked by a tsunami that may lead to its formal dissolution. President Museveni, after appointing two UPC politicians to Cabinet, has now reached for the jugular, asking UPC to seal a formal alliance with NRM. UPC has just six MPs in Parliament, down from 12 in 2006; so why the rush?
The heartland of UPC - Lango - is located in rich agricultural land whose potential is yet to be tapped as a potential bread basket once irrigation problems are solved. Most of the soils of their neighbours across Lake Kyoga have shed their productivity and infected from years of use and misuse of chemical inputs. Lango has twice the population of Acholi so with even two Cabinet positions, it is still under weighted. Acholi has two ministers, Hilary Onek and long-serving state minister Oryem Okello, both far away from Gulu.
The UPC chain link ring-fences a number of former UPCs - Philemon Mateke, Ephraim Kamuntu - and potentially brings more of them into the fold. The Tooro sub-region reaped a lot in the reshuffle, increasing its full Cabinet ranks by one post - Tom Butime. There is a lot of capital in having the Minister of Defence, a small risk as the minister of Defence has very little to do with UPDF. Kasese, like Kampala and Wakiso, stung a bee in the President's face and from the President's calculation, Kampala-Wakiso is the emergency - reaping two additional Cabinet posts to a total of three. Wakiso, the most populous district in the country, has one state minister, and Kampala has one Cabinet minister and one state minister.
Unlike other regions, the appointments in the metro-region are mostly of the non-threatening calibre, which pushes them further down from consideration or pressure of promotion or featuring in the succession matrix. Why else would individuals like Abdul Nadduli be in Cabinet? But like any other big family celebration, a lot of distant relatives are showing up for their share of their father's estate.
The swiftness with which election petitions are being decided are wiping the shine off NRM's huge parliamentary majority and revealing uncanny truths about the February election that the Supreme Court glossed over. The appointment of Joy Kabatsi over other new MPs in the cattle corridor like Robinah Gureme Rwakoojo, a former Commissioner in the Ministry of Justice, illustrates this point.
In selecting Cabinet, the President - with a few minor exceptions - steered away from MPs with dubious qualifications who are mostly in the Buganda and eastern regions. That's why court defeats for chaps like Peter Ssematimba will not cause a lot of front bench turbulence. The issue of papers is one in which the old man with a hat took a lot of interest.
Mr Ssemogerere is an Attorney-at-Law and an Advocate. kssemoge@gmail.com
Democracy is two Wolves and a Lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed Lamb disputing the results.
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