Citizen’s Coalition for Electoral Democracy in Uganda (CCEDU) has faulted President Yoweri Museveni for intimidating Members of Parliament on the restoration of the term limits and instead demanded for the process to be complete by September.
On Tuesday, President Yoweri Museveni blasted and branded the National Resistance Movement rebel MPs as ideologically bankrupt, warning that they risk being facing disciplinary measures for discussing something that was determined in the seventh parliament. In September 2005, the seventh parliament amended the 1995 constitution and removed the two five-year terms ceiling on the office of the president.
Livingstone Sewanyana, the Chairperson CCEDU Executive Committee told the media at Makerere University on Wednesday that the restoration of the presidential term limits is of national importance and beyond party politics.
Sseewanyana said the civil society have teamed up to mobilize the masses to have the presidential term limits restored as a process of achieving political stability in the region.
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Bishop Zac Niringiye, the outgoing Assistant Bishop of Kampala and a top official of the Inter-Religious Council of Uganda dismissed claims that the presidential term limits had been settled in the seventh parliament describing the day parliament lifted the terms as a tragedy that befell the country.
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According to Niringiye, parliament has to speed up the process of restoring term limits before September, which corresponds with the month it was removed in 2005.
He says Uganda has had aborted starts almost in every field which he partly blames on the unpredictable change of leadership in the country.
Sarah Kiyingi, the former state minister for internal affairs who was dropped from cabinet in 2003 for opposing the removal of presidential terms, says the future of the country lies in re-instating the term limits.
Kiyingi sounds hopeful that the parliamentarians advancing the debate are not diverted on petty issues including being promised cabinet posts.
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By close of day on Tuesday a total of 103 MPs had backed the debate to restore the term limits.
