The Opposition will not submit a refresh list of its missing supporters unless there is full accountability of the names on the lists which have previously been presented before Parliament, the Leader of Opposition in Parliament (LOP), Hon. Mathias Mpuuga, has said.
Addressing christians at a fundraising ceremony for the expansion of St. Joseph’s Sub-Parish Church, Nyendo in Masaka City’s Nyendo-Mukungwe Division, Mpuuga downplayed government’s latest demand for a new list of the political activists that the Opposition claims to have been abducted by state operatives.
“For the record, I will not submit another list because they already have so many other lists to which they have not offered accountability. I am not going to be performing rituals to which they make no response,” Mpuuga said.
Recently, the Deputy Speaker, Thomas Tayebwa, called for yet another meeting between the LOP and government over the alleged continued abductions and disappearances of the former’s supporters, specifically those that identify with the National Unity Platform (NUP) party.
The meeting scheduled for Tuesday, 06 December 2022, will be the second in as many months. The earlier meeting on 30 September 2022 was called after Mpuuga had in March 2021 tabled in the House a list of over 400 Opposition supporters who have been missing since the January 2021 general elections.
At the Nyendo event on Sunday, 04 December 2022, the LOP said that government, instead of asking for a new list ought to account for those on the previously submitted lists.
“Last year, I did submit a list of more than 200 people, but we have never gotten accountability of these persons. Over the last six months, I have made three submissions on the Floor of Parliament of missing persons and no accountability has ever been made. I do not intend to make [another] submission,” the Nyendo-Mukungwe MP said.
To Mpuuga, the duty now is on government to account for the people in legal detention and those who were picked by security operatives but are missing in the custodial records.
“Let them submit the number and names of people they have in legal custody so that we can know who and who is not there,” he added.
