Parliament returns Tuesday afternoon without signs of opposition returning to the house.

Opposition legislators walked out of the house last week after Allan Ssewanyana (Makindye West) and Muhammad Ssegirinya (Kawempe North) were rearrested after court handed them bail.

Leading his group out of the Parliament, leader of opposition, Mathias Mpuuga told the house they can not continue to stay in the house if their Ssewanyana and Ssegirinya remain in incarceration.

Mpuuga labelled Attorney General Kiryowa Kiwanuka’s submission on the rearrests of the two legislators scandalous before he led his team out of the house.

The leader of opposition who shared a video of his submission on his Twitter handle, lamented: “When the Attorney General chose to be legally scandalous, we opted to keep away from Plenary.”

Mpuuga, in a breath-taking summation of the Attorney General submission, raged: “These are the kind of situations as leaders of our people we try to avoid. When I saw the prime minister arrive here. I finally said I had warmth in my heart that a mother is around to speak to the country. I was disappointed of course. She is excusable. Surely she did not know what was going on.”

The National Unity Platform NUP leader went on: “Surely the speaker, the attorney general and his statement, is most disturbing . I am only learning here that the attorney general has a new constitution to which we are not privileged and therefore we can circumvent the position of the law and submit that they will be produced. We have the 48 hour rule Speaker, I had you clearly when somebody makes a mistake, you do not join them to make another wrong.”

Parliament returns this Tuesday but the leaders of the majority party in the house have vowed to stay away from the August House.

Mpuuga tweeted: “We have resolved to keep away from Parliamentary sittings until the due process in the prosecution of our colleague MPs Allan Ssewanyana and Ssegirinya plus all Opposition supporters held in military detention is followed.”

The leader of opposition was followed by the party’s chief whip, John Baptist Nambeshe, who tweeted: “We have decided to boycott parliamentary sittings in protest over the continued incarceration of colleague MPs like Allan Sewanyana and Muhamad Segirinya. When the NRM government is assaulting, abusing and insulting the rule of law and constitutionalism, the sittings are just a mockery.”

The party President Robert Kyagulanyi (Bobi Wine) rallied his group by tweeting: “When injustice and abuse are not stopped as seeds, they grow into big trees and then everybody will be a victim. The longer there’s inaction and no consequences for a dictatorship, the more emboldened it gets. The abduction and torture of two MPs in custody is evidence of that.”

President Yoweri Museveni has insisted the two MPs are murder suspects and should not be let into the public reasoning that ‘bail is a provocation’.

Museveni, while addressing the nation on Wednesday last week, questioned: “For somebody to kill a person and you give them bail is a provocation. It is abominable. I would like us to cure this ideological disagreement. This bail, what is the hurry? Who are you trying to please?”

The President met his party legislators last week, and vowed to push on with a call for a referendum to resolve the question of bail to capital offenders.

Museveni told the nation: “We are going to work on this. I am going to summon the NRM caucus and if necessary, we put it to a referendum. With this provocation, people will take the law into their own hands.”

The second biggest opposition Forum for Democratic Change FDC in the house while addressing a news conference at Najjanankumbi in Kampala, warned: “We want to tell Ugandans that this bail discussion is not new, Gen M7 has tried it many times. The latest being in 2011, we call people not to take this discussion literally; he intends to engage Ugandans into a constant discussion on the merits and demerits of bail.”

FDC whose members walked out of Parliament and continue to stay away, recalled: “Historically, on May 15th 2011, Mr Museveni set up a 5 member team to examine his ideas of amending the constitution to deny bail suspects of economic sabotage, murder and rioters and hostile Media etc. We have Ugandans who were imprisoned, guaranteed bail and were re-arrested.”

Lwemiyaga County MP, Theodore Ssekikubo raised concern about the continued absence of members of opposition in Parliament. Ssekikubo said that members of the NRM cannot continue sitting and debating among themselves without members of the opposition which he argued negates some constitutional provisions.

In her response, Speaker Anitah Among dismissed Ssekikubo’s concerns by guiding that it is not only NRM MPs in the house as there are independent MPs, UPDF MPs and thus the house was fully constituted to proceed.

Chris Baryomunsi supplemented this by informing the house that the quorum of the house is not about political parties but rather numbers. Baryomunsi said that even if it is only NRM or any political party and there is a quorum in the house, plenary will always proceed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADZPpD4MOJE