President Yoweri Museveni has said he is not happy with the way MPs conduct themselves when they are in Parliament.

“So for you to come here (Parliament) as MPs and you just sit, Members of Parliament, honourable, what! The whole day—standing, sitting down; point of order, point of information—you look like clowns in that Parliament there,” Museveni told the over 200 National Resistance Movement (NRM) MPs-elect on Thursday.

President Museveni addresses NRM MPs during the retreat at Kyankwanzi. Photo by Mpalanyi Ssentongo

He was officially opening the retreat for the newly elected party MPs and independents at the National Leadership Institute in Kyankwanzi district. The retreat that is also being attended by the party’s central executive committee members will end on April 29.

“You are like in a theatre, just acting! Your people who have remained in the village are carrying water on their heads; you are just here wasting time.  I am not happy with the way you conduct yourselves,” he told the MPs-elect.

“When will all the homesteads in your village get income, good houses, electricity, safe water and piped water, the mode of transport?” The President, who is also NRM national chairman, asked the lawmakers. “That is what we mean by social-economic transformation.”

Museveni called upon the new Parliament, which will again be dominated by NRM, to help his government get rid of poverty in rural areas instead of giving themselves more allowances and globetrotting which he said will not solve people’s problems.

Old MPs who retained their seats in the recent elections were excluded from attending the retreat because of the tight schedule of Parliament to pass the 2021/2022 national budget before the May deadline.