By Michael Tebukooza
Bugiri MP Asuman Basalirwa this week said something which shouldn’t go unchallenged. In justifying his closeness to speaker Anita Among, Basalirwa said this is because he is a personal lawyer to her and added that this is something over which any other Kampala lawyer would be justified to be envious of him.
On radio and TV talk shows, Basalirwa bragged about being an excellent lawyer who is now lucky to have the whole speaker of parliament as one of the clients he has at his law firm. He said this is something Bobi Wine wanted him to stop. He added that when he refused to lose such a valued client for his law firm, Bobi took it personal and declared him an enemy.
But there is one fact Basalirwa can’t run away from. This is that he had been a lawyer for more than 20 years but never got Anita Among or any other speaker of parliament become his client. How possible is it that Anita Among never gave work to his law firm until he became MP for Bugiri and herself the speaker of parliament?
She always filed cases in court including those about elections and the EALA legislators’ selection process. She challenged all these and filed cases in court but never used Asuman Basalirwa. Why? This is something Basalirwa wouldn’t be comfortable discussing or responding to but the truth is that Anita Among isn’t giving him assignments to do for her as a lawyer because she has all of a sudden realized that he is a very good lawyer.
It’s all about patronage and her determination to isolate and weaken Bobi Wine, a man who single-handedly resurrected Basalirwa’s political career by making him win the Bugiri sit in 2018. That is the naked truth regardless of how loudly Basalirwa protests. As long as he is in the Bugiri MP office in which Bobi Wine put him, Anita Among will find value in Basalirwa who will conveniently continue landing instructions to represent her in legal matters but the day he loses his seat or the day the need to isolate Bobi ceases, he will become valueless and that will predictably mark the beginning of the end of their relationship with the speaker. That will be the case regardless of whether Asuman Basalirwa continues being a good lawyer or not. And Basalirwa ought to know that and begin preparing for a rainy day.
Let him tell the world why he wasn’t getting Among’s instructions to represent her in legal matters before becoming MP for Bugiri and before Bobi Wine became a problem for the ruling political system in Uganda? Hoping he gets to read this and offers a convincing response to this question of why he only became Anita Among’s lawyer after Bobi made him Bugiri MP and not before. The author is a lawyer based in Mpigi. Give us feedback on this story through our email: kamwokyatimes@gmail.com
