Members of Parliament from the National Resistance Movement party who have been pushing for investigations into the Shs6bn oil cash bonanza on Tuesday rejected food at State House Entebbe.
According to sources that attended the closed door sitting, the MPs who have even formed a group calling for action against the Presidential handshake beneficiaries, maintained that the Legislature must probe the matter and either exonerate or hold the recipients responsible for the money they shared.
“We refused to eat food there (State House) and strongly maintained our earlier stance that Parliament should go ahead with its investigation. NRM is against any form of corruption and it was clearly stated in our manifesto,” one of the majority members who refused to eat said.
MPs told Museveni that they are not against him or the beneficiaries but that the processes through which the deal was pursued were questionable and need to be probed.
“We made it clear to him that we have nothing against him and instead we are protecting his name that is already being misused by some people. No one is against (Doris) Akol and the rest who took the money but the procedures leading to handshake leave a lot to be desired,” another NRM MP against the handshake said.
The President had told the MPs that they are among the many people who are maligning and demonizing the beneficiaries who ought to be thanked for doing a good job to recover over 700million dollars in tax arrears to oil companies Tullow and Heritage.
The president appealed to them to probe the matter in good faith if need be. The motion to formally launch an investigation into the matter is expected to be moved on the floor of Parliament tomorrow by the Mbarara Municipality MP, Michael Tusiime who is also an NRM member.