By Our Reporter
Fort Portal City Member of Parliament, who also doubles as Chairperson Tooro/Rwenzori Parliamentary Forum, Hon Alex Ruhunda has for the first time reacted to the ongoing ‘probe’ into Uganda Airlines operations by Parliamentary Committee on State Authorities and State Enterprises (COSASE) headed by Nakawa West MP Joel Ssenyonyi. Ruhunda, who is also a member of the committee but has been away on national duties described the entire exercise by Ssenyonyi as a “witch hunt” and a direct attack on the Tooro region.
Ruhunda wondered how a whole chairperson could deviate from asking about accountability issues to ambushing the person of Jennifer by asking for proof of academic papers when she had come to answer queries about the income and expenditures of the airline. According to Ruhunda, it was also unusual for the committee chairman to use his personal social media platforms to post matters which were still under his own probe committee, meaning he was still investigating,but rushed to draw conclusions and even post them in order to charge the public against the CEO.
“Hon.Ssenyonyi is a lawyer, how can he share committee proceedings on his social media platforms disregarding the principle of presumption of innocence as provided under article 28 of the constitution? According to what he and his team are doing, Jennifer is already guilty before the ‘public court’ and even if she proves them wrong tomorrow, the public may not give it the same attention,” he said while talking to our reporter on phone.
He added thus; “Why couldn’t our able Chairman at least wait and post conclusions after the report is done? As Chairman of the committee, I expected him to do his job in silence, and then speak with authority after the findings. Otherwise what I see is playing in the gallery and a witch-hunt of people, for media, attention for capital capital, unfortunately, they’re doing it at the cost of someone else’s reputation which he has worked for for over 20 yrs,” Ruhunda added.
Ruhunda said that in his opinion, COSASE powers entrusted to some people are being misused to witch-hunt rather than the real work.
Jennifer who spent the better part of last week at parliament being grilled by COSASE has been invited to appear before the same committee again starting this Tuesday for another whole week, which some onlookers say it’s also strange, further pointing to a witch-hunt.
Now MPs from the Tooro subregion are demanding to put a stop to what they called a witch-hunt guised as a probe. “If it’s a probe, then why are they not asking accountability issues but personal issues exposing their personal vendetta,” another MP added.
“Now Ssentonyi and group have already sold a narrative to the whole world that Jennifer is not educated and qualified for the job without giving her time to produce documents. So if tomorrow she brings them, will Ssenyonyi use the same energy to now say she’s educated? Are they bothered about her reputation as a person and the company?” he added.
Meanwhile, this site last week discovered that Bamuturaki has over 15 years of experience in aviation with a bachelor’s degree in Social Work and Social Administration from Makerere University. The degree is backed up by a couple of certificates obtained from the International Air Transport Association (IATA) which makes her a strong CEO for the job.
Bamuturaki is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Public Administration at Makerere University. However all these, to already subjective committee led by NUP mouth piece Ssenyonyi may not make sense for now. “They’re are trying to discredit the appointing authority,that look, Museveni doesn’t know how to do due diligence with his appointments and therefore incapable. That’s what NUP is doing using state resources in parliament,” another one added.
