Africa: On Friday, Bukedea Woman MP, Annet Anita Among, was voted for the new parliament speaker of Uganda to replace Jacob Oulanyah, who was suffering and battling cancer in Washington, who died last Saturday.
In that same election, Ruhinda North Country MP Thomas Tayebwa was also voted the next Deputy Speaker of Parliament. He is also elected to replace Among, who lost the position for an upper one.
For these two, this was a mercurial rise to these positions; however, none of them has spent ten years in the ruling party through which they were elected to the post.
On Friday, when she was elected for the Parliament speaker, it was only two years Among officially joined as the NRM party, having fallen out with Forum for Democratic Change.
History:
In 2006, Among served as a branch manager in Centenary Bank in Uganda, but she left that bank and joined politics, having earlier taught accounting at Kampala International University.
During her early stage of politics, Among subscribed to the Forum for Democratic Change. In 2007, when the Bukedea district was created, she lost election aganist NRM’s ‘Rose Akol’; however, after that successfully faced the next elections with that same person.
However, in 2016 Among broke all the records when she stood as an independent candidate and won the Bukedea Women Parliamentary seat.
A few years into that term, Among had shown signs that her heart was elsewhere, not the Forum for Democratic Change.
It catches Museveni’s eye:
Mainly 2017, Among joined Parliament and confessed publicly that she was working with the NRM national Chairman, President Yoweri Museveni.
In one of her interviews, she also confessed that “It is true the president is one of my good friends, and I can meet him whenever I want. If you think that I want to get money from him, yes, I get it and even If I want it right now, I can easily call and tell him that ‘Mzee, I am broke’, and he will give it; to me.”
The confession sent shockwaves to many, especially those in opposition, but this was not all.
In 2020, Among never looked back, and in 2020, she formally joined the ruling NRM party and later won in the primaries.
She later won the Bukedea Woman MP seat unopposed to come to Parliament, but this was not all, as the new queen of the NRM was endorsed by the ruling party to run for the position of deputy speaker of the 11th Parliament, a position she had served in for the last nine months until Friday when she was elected Speaker of the 11th Parliament.
