Female Members of Parliament have asked ICT minister Frank Tumwebaze to task the Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) to investigate political activist Charles Rwomushana’s comments made recently on TV.
The orders were made yesterday by Lira Woman MP Atim Ongom, who said that Rwomushana had insulted female MPs while appearing as a panelist on NBS TV Frontline talk show.
She told the Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Jacob Oulanyah, that Rwomushana insisted on referring to the female legislators as ‘prostitutes’ ‘who do nothing in the fight for maternal health but only clap and stamp in the House with the hope of being appointed ministers’. In response Oulanyah ordered for speedy action against Rwomushana.
However, as expected, the public has come out in defense of Rwomushana. And among these is former Leader of Opposition (LoP) in Parliament, Wafula Oguttu.
“What is the hullabaloo we are hearing from Parliament about Charles Rwomushana? That while on NBS Frontline program last week, he had compared some of our women MPs to prostitutes, those who have sold their souls to the dictator instead of fighting for women rights. Where is he wrong?” he questions in a post on social media.
“Is that not a form of political prostitution? One time VP Spe Wandira while addressing a women conference in Addis compared women including wives who just sit there and expect their men to fend for them, to PROSTITUTES. No body sanctioned her and it was not necessary. Our MPs need to get real. They waste a lot of time on trivialities and keep off serious issues. Both NBS and Charles should just ignore.They have committed no crime. Most women in Parliament do not work for ordinary women. They work for Museveni interests, for their personal and for middle class interests.”
Meanwhile, Rwomushana has vowed not to apologise for his statements.
“If there’s any group that is best represented in Parliament is the women but if you look at the plight of women in the rural areas, you ask, do these women organise to fight for the plight of the women?” he told NTV.
What others said:
Patrick Darren Murungi: It seems their heads are too thick to understand simple metaphors! They are seated comfortably in Parliament as school girls miss classes because they can’t afford simple common and cheap sanitary towels. They are busy driving big cars as 16 women die daily in the nation’s overburdened labour suites. They are just opening their legs wider for the Dictator. Typical prostitutes, tebatukoya!
Antony Otushabire: Mr Rwomushana was very careful to refer to some of these ‘potato growers’, to borrow from Hon Ssemujju Nganda, as prostitutes. He never generalized. Indeed very many behave like prostitutes. Some do not even know why they are in parliament. Whoever cared to see how they behaved during the EALA elections, was left with no doubt in their minds that indeed the deserved what they are labeled.
