When MP Mawanda Sought To Sign Censure Motion As A Shield From CID Summons
Igara East MP Micheal Mawanda was Monday, summoned to appear before the Police’s Criminal Investigation Department at Kibuli on June 18th to be interrogated for the alleged theft, corruption, and intentions to cheat Buyaka Growers Cooperative of compensation funds from Government.
Mawanda, the chairperson of the Patriotic League of Uganda (PLU) disciplinary committee, had been a no-show at parliament for a couple of weeks until yesterday, when he surfaced at the House, purportedly to sign on a censure motion against four backbench commissioners, alleged to have participated in corruption, spearheaded by Lwemiyaga’s Theodore Ssekikubo.
As peers’ norm of chest-thumping as anti-corruption crusaders, Mawanda joined the chorus to explain that he had signed because his PLU has zero-tolerance to corruption policy, the reason he had signed to impeach parliamentary commissioners.
But sources from parliament, intimated to FileFactsUg, Mawanda “thought signing of the censure motion would shield him from his real trouble emanating from outright theft. He had information from the Speaker’s office about his summons and that is why he found something to try and cleanse himself, but here we are.”
Our source asked, “where has Mawanda been for all this long to sign the censure motion let alone that is dramatic itself? The censure motion has been traded by Ssekikubo and company for a month, how come he had never come across to sign it well aware that his PLU doesn’t tolerate corruption?”
Mawanda is not new to corruption arrests-he was in 2013, arrested alongside Isaac Musumba, former Regional Cooperation Minister from India in connection to the extortion of funds worth $20m from four directors of electronics company, Videocon.
At CID, he will appear with Mbulambuli MP in Elgon sub-region, Ignatius Wamakuyu Mudini.
The two MPs’ summons comes after their colleague MPs Ciccy Namujju, Lwengo district Woman MP, Yusuf Mutembuli, Bunyole East MP, and Paul Akamba were summoned, quizzed, arrested and produced before Anti-Corruption court on charges of negotiating kickbacks in return for increasing MDAs’ budgets during the appropriation processes.