MPs Erias Lukwago and Betty Nambooze have given Edward Ssekandi, the Speaker of Parliament, a 21-day ultimatum to avail them records of parliament. The records are to back their suit for the passing parliamentary resolutions without quorum.
This is contained in another letter addressed to Ssekandi and Aeneas Tandekwire, the Clerk to parliament by the two legislators. Last week, Lukwago and Nambooze wrote to Ssekandi in vain seeking permission to use the records of parliament to back their suite against him and parliament for passing resolutions without quorum.
Ssekandi declined to grant the legislators permission saying that they had wrongly addressed their concern, and raised the matter in the wrong forum. The MPs now say that unless the speaker grants them permission to access the parliamentary records they will be forced to drag him to the constitutional court.
In the second letter that Uganda Radio Network has seen the MPs invoke Section 16 of the access to information act to force the speaker to comply.
The two want the speaker to give them records of parliamentary debates between September 13th and 30th of this year. They say that all resolutions within this period were arrived at without the constitutionally required quorum. They want the constitutional court to declare all the resolutions null and void.
The documents they need include attendance registers of MPs during all plenary, all motions and bills and copies of the Hansard within those 17 days.
This time around, they have also copied the leader of government business in parliament as well as the leader of opposition.
The speaker of parliament and Tandikwire have not yet commented on the new letter they were both away from parliament when our reporter tried to contact them. Ssekandi was reportedly in his constituency while the Clerk to parliament was reportedly unwell and out of office.
