Premier Robinah Nabbanja has asked Kampala Archbishop Paul Ssemogerere guide politics out of the Church or else the unhappy believers opt out.
Rt. Hon. Nabbanja said this during the requiem Mass for the former Democratic Party President and Minister, Dr. Paul Kawanga Ssemogerere, who was eulogized by many as a good, clean, loving, forgiving, principled, patriotic, peace-loving man.
Opposition politicians including Dr. Kiiza Besigye, the former Forum for Democratic Change President, Lord Mayor Erias Lukwago, and former legislator, Maria Babirye Kabanda drew a sharp contrast in the values of the late Ssemogerere and the practice by the current government.
First was Lukwago who after speaking about the deceased’s virtues led an attack on the government he accused of abusing the right to association, a right he said the deceased had fought so hard to restore.
Dr. Besigye said that when Museveni appointed the Odoki constitutional commission to spearhead the writing of a new constitution, it took another two years under his pressure, to have it funded. Dr. Kiiza Besigye speaking…….
The attacks rabble-roused Premier Nabbanja who as a representative of the government at the ceremony had sat through the long Mass and speeches stretching for five hours until over 7:00 pm.
Ms Nabbanja who by protocol came last asked mourners not to politicize the rest of the funeral, asking Archbishop Paul Ssemogerere that some un-amused believers would be forced to leave the church and the solution was to get politics out of the Church. Rt. Hon. Nabanja speaking……
Earlier on, the premier had explained that President Museveni couldn’t attend the requiem Mass because of another Catholic Church engagement in Agago where the beatification of the late Italian Father Joseph Giuseppe Ambrossoli was taking place. She said the late Dr. Paul Ssemogerere was a personal friend of the President, who he had fondly talked of as having held a clean presidential campaign in 1996, devoid of personal attacks. END