Speaker job is mine â€" Nandala

ALFRED BYENKYA

BUDARI West MP Nathan Nandala Mafabi (FDC) has stepped up efforts to become the Speaker of the ninth Parliament.

Nandala the current chairperson of a House oversight committee, PAC, has said that he is against Speaker Edward Ssekandi or his deputy Rebecca Kadaga to lead the next Parliament.

“We need a change and I am competing because the speakership has been blamed for inefficiency and opaqueness. Kadaga never comes out to blame her friend, Sekandi when he makes mistakes,” Nandala told the New Vision in an interview on Tuesday morning at Parliament.

This follow media reports that President Yoweri Museveni had settled on Kadaga and Fox Odoi for Speaker and deputy respectively. Odoi is MP elect for North Budama in Tororo district.

Mafabi said that Parliament needs a Speaker elected by the members but not a political party.

Once elected to the third top position in the land, Nandala promised to be an employee of the institution of Parliament but not his party.

“In this race, a competent person honorable members should look at is Nandala. I want to make Parliament transparent for every Ugandan to be proud of,” he added.

Several MPs have publicly declared their candidature, while others are quietly lobbying fellow legislators to support and vote for them.

Ssekandi is currently non-committal as he is constrained by the fact that he is the presiding Speaker until the expiry of the Eighth Parliament in May.

“I have been able to hold a multiparty parliament together for five years, and I will soon be handing it over to the Ninth Parliament intact,” he told Sunday Vision over the weekend.

However, Nandala’s main undoing is the fact that the opposition is outnumbered 7 to 1 in Parliament.

The outspoken opposition legislator says he has already met a group of ruling NRM party MPs who are not pleased with the way current Ssekandi handles debate and have pledged to support him (Mafabi).

The Speaker of Parliament is elected by all MPs in the first plenary session of a new Parliament. The election of teh Speaker is presided over by the Chief Justice.