KAMPALA: Lawyers, ruling party differ on MPs’ future

By NELSON WESONGA.

The National Resistance Movement’s expulsion of four of its Members of Parliament from the party is inconsequential, three constitutional lawyers have said.

Senior counsel Wandera Ogalo, Peter Walubiri and Medard Lubega Segona said the four MPs would not forfeit their parliamentary seats.

That could only happen if the electorate, not the party, recalled them, the three said.

“If you expel me, it does not mean I have to leave Parliament. My mandate is from the people who elected me, and not from the party. The electorate did not surrender their mandate, to recall me from Parliament, to the party,” Mr Ogalo told the Daily Monitor yesterday.

He said in 2005, the government had wanted to include a provision in the law that once a party expels a member, such a member forfeits his or her seat. “But Parliament said, No,” said Mr Ogalo.

Mr Walubiri said: “The Constitution is silent on the matter of one’s expulsion from a political party. It appears what it had in mind was voluntary action by an individual. So the MPs will be stuck in Parliament.” “To say that once one loses his or her parliamentary seat once the party they subscribe to expels them is speculation, which has no basis in the law,” added Mr Segona, who is also the Busiro East MP.

All four refused to appear before the party’s disciplinary committee which they accused of being used to curtail freedom of speech.

Different view

However, NRM chief whip Justine Lumumba said the MPs have to seek fresh mandate from the electorate in their respective constituencies. “This is a multiparty dispensation. You are in Parliament as an NRM, FDC, Independent, DP, UPC, and CP, Army representative or as an Ex-officio. Should the party expel you, you basically lose your seat and have to go back to the electorate to seek a fresh mandate,” Ms Lumumba said yesterday.

Source: Daily Monitor (16/04/2013): http://www.monitor.co.ug/News/National/Lawyers--ruling-party-differ-on-MPs--future/-/688334/1749464/-/qt5mnnz/-/index.html