The Attorney General has asked the Constitutional Court to dismiss with costs a petition challenging the new amendments in the Computer Misuse Act of 2022.

The response which has been filed before the Constitutional Court is in respect to a petition filed by 13 petitioners on October 17th, 2022.   The petitioners are, Norman Tumuhimbise, Arnold Mukose, Farida Bikobere, Jeremiah Mukiibi, Kato Tumusiime, Lillian Luwedde, Rogers Turyahabwe, Teangel Teddy Nabukeera, Nixon Segawa together with their employer Alternative Digitalk Limited, an Online Television, Activist Angella Namirembe and lawyers Simon Peter Esomu and Anthony Odur.

They petitioned Court challenging the decision taken on September 8th, 2022 by the Parliament to pass the Computer Misuse (Amendment Act), 2022 which was subsequently assented to by President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni on October 13th, 2022.

It was tabled by the Kampala Central Member of Parliament Muhammad Nsereko. The law makes it a crime to write, send or share hateful, unsolicited, misleading, or malicious information online. It also criminalizes the use of photos on social media without the express permission of the owners.

Further, it prohibits sharing information that is likely to degrade or ridicule another person, group of persons, tribe, religion, ethnicity, or gender, and children without the consent of their parents or guardians.

The Act also creates a punishment ranging between five to 10 years or 10 million shillings or both for people found in breach, and it further criminalizes recording another person’s voice or video without their consent and unauthorized access to personal information.

The petitioners argue that the amendments are overly broad, imprecise, and unjustifiably limit the freedom of expression and the right to practice one’s profession and carry on any lawful occupation, trade, or business and access to information.

They asked the Constitutional Court to nullify the amendments and declare them null and void on grounds that they contravene several constitutional provisions.

The Attorney General who is listed as the only respondent to the petition wants the case dismissed saying the petition is misconceived and lacks merit.

Relying on an affidavit of Adolf Mwesige Kasaija the Clerk to Parliament, the Attorney General says the Act was premised on the need to enhance the enjoyment of the right to privacy which is being affected by the abuse of online and social media platforms through authorized access, sharing unsolicited, malicious, hateful and unwarranted information and to further address new and emerging threats to the enjoyment of the right to privacy guaranteed under the constitution.

“That I know that the Members of Parliament debated the advancement of technology, especially computer-generated technology, and noted that the internet had become a platform for misuse and abuse which called for the strengthening of the existing legal framework”, reads the affidavit.

Mwesige adds that the law was also passed to protect the right of privacy for children in the digital age in their best interest due to increased abuse of their rights and it was further done to limit hate speech in the interest of the community.

“That I know the Members of Parliament also appreciated the advancement in information technology which now offers a massive range of new products and services which are being abused by users through illegitimate unsolicited messages and there was no existing legal framework to regulate the same”, reads Mwesige‘s affidavit.

According to Mwesige, he has been advised by his lawyers in the Attorney General’s chambers whose advice he believes to be true that the contentious sections of the Computer Misuse Act are demonstrably justifiable restrictions in a free and democratic society and do not contravene any provisions of the constitution.

The Attorney General wants the petition to be thrown out because the petitioners are not entitled to the prayers, orders, and declarations sought.

The case is yet to be fixed for hearing before the Constitutional Court Justices.

There is also a related case filed by the Legal Brains Trust, a non-profit organization also challenging the Act in the East African Court of Justice on grounds that the law infringes on several provisions enshrined in the East African Community treaty where Uganda is a signatory.  The Attorney General is yet to respond to this matter.

A similar petition pending in the Constitutional Court was also filed in 2019 by the Uganda Law Society challenging specifically the sections of the Computer Misuse Act which create the offenses of offensive communication and cyber harassment on grounds that they violate freedom of expression.

The Parliamentary Forum on Social Protection has warned that thousands of older persons benefiting from the Social Assistance Grants for Empowerment – SAGE programme across the country will be severely affected following a significant budget cut.

Flavia Kabahenda, the Chairperson of the Forum says that a position paper on Social Protection Financing in the National Budget Framework Paper for the Financial Year 2023/24 reflects extreme finding shortfalls of up to 80 per cent towards social protection interventions.

The Senior Citizens Grant is Uganda’s largest cash transfer programme that started in 2010 targeting older persons aged 80 years and above. Currently, a total of 306,516 older persons are enlisted to benefit from the grant with a monthly grant of 25,000 Shillings for each.

Kabahenda pointed out that the number is expected to increase given the ongoing registration of eligible beneficiaries and the correction of 43,559 potential members’ details by the National Identification & Registration Authority – NIRA.

The current budget requirement for the 306,516 beneficiaries is 121 billion Shillings. But the Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development – MoFPED has approved and allocated 24 billion Shillings only, about 20 per cent required financing.

Bugiri Municipality Member of Parliament Asuman Basalirwa criticized the Government for failing to meet its obligation of taking care of the older persons yet the composition of the Executive is typical of the elderly.

Due to inflation, the grant value has since been eroded from the initial 25,000 Shillings to 14,500 Shillings. In their report on the National Budget Framework Paper, the Budget Committee of Parliament recommended increasing the value to 30,000 Shillings.

In FY 2022/2023, Parliament adopted a recommendation to have the age of eligibility reduced from the current 80 to 75 years. It would require an additional budget of 71 billion Shillings to meet the target.

Also, in the current financial year, a total of 962 Persons with Disabilities groups benefited from their Special Grant which reached out to 7,377 individuals out of which 5,752 were males and 4,265 females across 66 Local Governments in the country.

From the 16.6 billion Shillings provided in the Financial Year 2022/23, the current Budget Framework Paper shows an allocation of only 3.32 billion Shillings. It is estimated that about 2,600 children aged 7-17 years across live on the streets, denting the country’s human capital development strategies.

While the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development requires five billion Shillings for their withdrawal, rehabilitation and resettlement, no allocation was made for the purpose.

The Committee on Commissions, Statutory Authorities and State Enterprises – COSASE has recommended a forensic audit of the 918 million Shillings’ monthly maintenance for the 51.5km Kampala-Entebbe Expressway.

The recommendation stems from a probe report of COSASE conducted in November 2022 following the report of the Auditor General for the Financial Year 2020/2021.

The Committee Chairperson Joel Ssenyonyi noted that the 918.47 million Shillings contract awarded in May 2021 to M/S EGIS Road Operation S.A, a French engineering firm to undertake a 60-months performance-based management contract valued at 122 billion Shillings per month, exclusive of Value Added Tax – VAT and other contingencies is excessive.

According to the contract terms, in the first six months, EGIS was expected to provide road safety facilities that include; expressway lighting, security services, axle-load control/monitoring system, routine road maintenance, and emergency maintenance works at all times.

But Ssenyonyi revealed their finding discovered that since the commencement of usage of the expressway, lights have never been installed rendering it dark at night causing insecurity, and accidents to motorists, and impacting negatively revenue collections.

Further, COSASE discovered that EGIS through the tolling collection system that commenced on January 8, 2022, currently fetches an average of 2.8 billion Shillings out of which Uganda National Roads Authority – UNRA is obliged to release 900 million Shillings and sometimes one billion Shillings to the company for maintenance.

Maurine Osoru, the Arua City Women Representative raised concerns that guardrails on the Kampala-Entebbe Expressway are being vandalized and urged UNRA and the Police to provide regular patrols on the road and trace the criminals.

The Committee also faulted the expressway contractor China Communications Construction Company – CCCC for failure to fix the defects within the required three months and directed UNRA to provide an update to Parliament.

Construction of the 51.4 km road kicked off in 2012 courtesy of a $350 million from the Exim Bank of China loan credit while $126 million was a contribution from the Government of Uganda. The credit loan is repayable over a period of 40 years.

UNRAs Director of Maintenance Eng. Joseph Otim disclosed that the money generated from toll collections is expected to meet Uganda’s loan obligations. Recently, Eng. Otim revealed that they have surpassed the initial two billion Shillings they set out to collect 2.9 billion Shillings per month.

He added that originally, the traffic was estimated at about 14,000 vehicles per day but now about 21,000 vehicles daily. This money is banked in an escrow account and part of that money is used for maintenance of the road and other improvements.

The Bank of Uganda – BOU has been tasked to explain how it seized and sold off assets of the Co-operative Bank of Uganda, without liquidating the institution.

According to the records available, the Co-operative Bank was registered in 1964 under the Cooperatives Act and has never been liquidated or abolished.

Following the turbulent economic and political times, its operations were disrupted and it virtually collapsed with the collapse of the Cooperative Movement, as privatization and economic liberalization took root.

In 1997, an attempt to revive the bank, which was mainly benefiting farmers, resulted in the formation of the Uganda Cooperative Bank Ltd, a limited liability company, under the Companies Act.

However, this lasted just two years and allegations of mismanagement and corruption led to its closure by the Bank of Uganda in 1999 under the then Governor Nyonyintono Kigonyogo.

The Attorney General has given the Bank of Uganda up to January 23, 2023, to explain which of the two companies was closed.

In an email statement, the Bank of Uganda insisted that it closed Cooperative Bank which was formed in 1997 under the Companies Act, replacing the old bank.

“The Cooperative Bank was established under the law in 1963 and was transformed into a corporate entity in 1997 under the Company Act, as a precondition to receiving USAID funding. This transformed entity is what was closed in 1999 and whose liquidation was concluded on 25th July 2020,” says the statement mailed by Charity Mugumya, Director of Communications at BOU.

It is not clear then, how the new company’s liabilities extended to the 1964 bank that the BOU got the mandate to sell them off, yet the bank has never been deregistered.

The Minister of Trade, Industry, and Cooperatives, Francis Mwebesa’s petition to the Attorney General says by the time the 1997 Cooperative Bank was closed, “the process of turning the bank into a company had not been completed, neither had the ‘original’ Cooperative Bank’ been deregistered.”

“Which cooperative bank did BOU close? If it was the latter bank, why were the assets of the former seized and sold instead?” the letter signed by JBR Suuza on behalf of the Solicitor General reads in part.

The letter also asks for “any other relevant information on the subject” pertaining to the winding up of the Cooperative Bank.

“We will appreciate your response, preferably by Monday 23rd January 2023,” says the letter to BOU’s Legal Counsel. The Bank was closed on May 1999.

The matter also came up in the 2018/19 parliamentary probe into the closure of seven banks by BOU.

One of the contentious issues was the price paid for the assets of the bank.  The report by the Committee on Statutory Agencies and State Enterprises, COSASE, noted that the assets were sold at a discount of 93 percent, which was described as a giveaway.

Ivan Asiimwe, a former shareholder said the bank at the time had 25 branches and dive agencies around the country. “The committee in the course of interaction with the Uganda Co-operative Alliance (representing the cooperators that formed the Cooperative B in 1964), established that in 1992, the Government together with USAID made attempts to recapitalize the distressed Co-operative Bank,” says the COSASE report.

They complained that in the process a new company (the Cooperative Bank Ltd) was incorporated with the same name with a set of directors and subscribers.

“This was done without deregistering or liquidating the previous co-operative Bank Ltd of 1964 registered under the Cooperative Societies Act.”

Registering a new bank with the same name without liquidating/winding up the first resulted in having two banks duly registered, according to COSASE.

“The committee, therefore, recommends that BoU, the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Co-operatives, and the Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development resolve the concerns of the Uganda Co-operative Alliance and assets of the Co-operative Bank. It is further recommended that Government reports on the matter to this House within six months,” the committee led by MP Abdu Katuntu recommended.

“As far as we, the cooperators, the Cooperative Bank formed in 1964 still exists, we just want it revived,” said Asiimwe, the Uganda Co-operative Alliance chief executive.

He says the farmers, who are the main beneficiaries of a Cooperative Bank have been suffering under the current banking regime which offers no tailored products for them.

Parliament will on Monday debate the censure motion against Persis Princess Namuganza, the State Minister for Lands, Housing, and Urban Development.

The motion is the third item on the order paper issued on Friday by the Clerk to Parliament, Adolf Mwesige Kasaija.

The seven-member Select Committee of Parliament chaired by Mwine Mpaka, the Mbarara City South Division MP which was appointed by Deputy Speaker Thomas Tayebwa on January 6, 2023, to investigate Namuganza over alleged transgression against Parliament will present its report.

The committee summoned Namuganza three times to defend herself against the accusations levied against her but failed to appear and only sent her lawyer, Norman Pande to present a letter in which she cited sub judice and short notice as reasons for not appearing.

While meeting the Committee last week, the lawyer argued his client was not served the pieces of evidence of the allegations levied against her in the motion which could not enable her to prepare her ground to make a defense.

MPs led by John Amos Okot, the Agago North Member of Parliament tabled before the Committee newspaper articles, video footage extracted from a YouTube channel, and clips that aired on NTV and NBS news bulletin pinning Namuganza for attacking Parliament.

Dan Kimosho, the Kazo County Member of Parliament one of 200 MPs who signed the petition and also presented evidence to support the censure motion against the Minister reiterated that the only action that should be taken against Namuganzais censure.

In December, Okot moved a motion seeking a resolution of Parliament to censure Namuganza, who also doubles as the Bukono County MP in Namisindwa district for contempt of Parliament after 200 legislators signed a petition to support the process. Trouble for Namuganza started in May after an ad-hoc Committee implicated Namuganza for unlawful involvement in the 142-acre Nakawa-Nagura Housing estate land giveaway to some investors purportedly on the President’s directive for a satellite city.

The Minister walked out of the meeting convened by the ad-hoc Committee and later made public comments that Parliament, which vetted her appointment after being seconded to the Ministry by the President, does not have the right to investigate her.

She has since denied any wrongdoing and declined to apologize insisting that she is innocent but only witch hunted by Speaker Anita Among who wants to satisfy a personal vendetta and ego against her.

The Nakawa Chief Magistrate Court has pushed the case where the former presidential candidate and president of the National Economic Empowerment Dialogue party (NEED) Joseph Kabuleta is charged with promoting sectarianism to March.

In November 2022 Kabuleta was arrested on allegations of refusal to honor Police summons at the Criminal Investigation Directorate at Naguru to record a statement on charges of promoting sectarianism.

Police allege that during a press conference, Kabuleta and others still at large on May 2022, alleged that service delivery at Mbarara district is based on ethnic belongings of the Tutsi, Bahima, Bakiga, and Banyankole which created dissatisfaction and promoted feelings of ill-will.

Ritah Newumbe Kidasa the Chief Magistrate of Nakawa court adjourned the case to March 15 because Doreen Erima the prosecutor in the case was not present in court.

Joseph Kabuleta says that the state is free will to carry out all the necessary investigations in the matter.