The shadow cabinet has announced a boycott of the upcoming regional parliamentary sittings, citing unnecessary expenditure.
The first regional sitting is scheduled for August 29 and 30 at Kaunda Playgrounds in Gulu City’s Bardege-Layibi Division, with additional sittings planned for Mbarara, Masaka, and Mbale. These sittings will cover Uganda’s four traditional regions: Northern, Eastern, Western, and Central.
Addressing the media at Parliament, the Leader of the Opposition in Parliament Joel Ssenyonyi criticized the nearly Five billion Shillings allocated for a single parliamentary session, deeming it unjustifiable and lacking economic sense.
Ssenyonyi further explained that the opposition had requested the issue of regional parliaments be discussed by the Parliamentary Commission and Business Committee, but their pleas were ignored.
The 11th Parliament is comprised of 87 opposition legislators from several political parties including the National Unity Platform – NUP, the Forum for Democratic Change FDC, the Democratic Party-DP, the Uganda People’s Congress – UPC, People’s Progressive Party-PPP, and the Justice Forum among others.
Following the enactment of the Appropriation Bill 2024 on July 2, 2024, which President Yoweri Museveni subsequently signed into law two days later, Speaker Anita Among announced the regional sittings of the House, starting with Gulu City.
The regional sitting of the House will be the first of its kind outside Kampala since October 1962, when Uganda held its first sitting a day after the country attained independence from the British colonialists.
