Minister Bahati Clarifies on ‘Rushed’ Clearance of Age Limit Bill

The State Minister of Finance, David Bahati has appeared before the Legal and Parliamentary Affairs committee of Parliament to defend the issued Certificate of Financial Implication to the Constitution Amendment Bill No.2 (2017) which was tabled by Igara West MP, Raphael Magyezi.

It is a requirement by law that for any bill to be processed by Parliament, it must first secure the said certificate so as to find out whether the Bill has no financial effects to government and whether Parliament shall be able to raise the funds needed to have it implemented and passed into law.

Bahati confirmed to members that the Certificate presented by Magyezi is genuine and was issue by the Ministry on September 28, allaying fears of some members who thought it might have been forged.

It should be noted that at the start of the Committee hearings, Magyezi was put to under oath after members doubted the documents that he had tendered in including the copy of the Gazette.
The members as well questioned how fast the two documents were issued to the Magyezi Bill yet other Bills haven’t been given the certificate.

“We received the application for the certificate to the bill and were told that it would be presented the following Tuesday and since we had no problem with it, we worked very hard to issue the certificate as soon as we received the application,” Bahati said.

Asked why too much speed was used to grant the certificate, the Minister said that, “the period to issue a certificate of financial implication depends on the complex of the Bill.”

“This was a straight forward Bill. All that Magyezi wanted was to lift the age limit to remove the limitation of 75 years which doesn’t require a lot of analysis on whether it would affect our budget or not because it is already provided for under the Electoral Commission,” the Minister noted.

He said that, “The Bill was needed urgently to be presented in the House and we had to work more efficiently, I am glad that the committee agrees that this is the speed that we should apply even on other Bills.”

The Managing Director, Uganda Printing and Pushing Corporation, George Mugerwa has confirmed to have worked under strict instructions from the Clerk to Parliament to have the Bill gazetted on September 28.