By Leonard Kamugisha Akida,
NATIONAL
Forum for democratic change has asked government to deploy blind punitive measures to deal with high profile corrupt officials.
The call has been made by the party deputy spokesperson, John Kikonyogo while addressing journalists on counting corruption in the country, at FDC headquarters in Kampala on Monday.
This followed a decision by court to decline to give a custodian sentence to former principal accountant in the Office of Prime Minister, Geoffrey Kazinda over by the Sh306.8m embezzlement case
Last week, the Anti-corruption court judge Lawrence Gidudu ‘lost interest’ in keeping former principal accountant in the Office of the Prime Minister Geoffrey Kazinda who has been in detention for about 10yrs for squandering public funds amounting to a tune of 306.8millions under Peace, Recovery and Development Plan (PRDP) project for West Nile and northern.
“Considering that he has been on remand for four years which would have covered the five years imprisonment for this particular case, I do not consider more imprisonment for the convict who has been in prison for over 10 years and still counting. The mitigating factors outweigh the aggravating factors,” Justice Gidudu ruled.
According to justice Gidudu, more imprisonment of Kazinda does not add value because the pertinent issue would be recovery of the lost monies squandered on behalf of the government.
The judge explained that Kazinda was charged separately for his trial but all these crimes arose from his employment in the OPM and in this particular case, he appeared for a plea in 2019 and has been on remand for four years in jail.
“I have lost interest to send him to prison because it makes no sense now. I am inclined to impose a custodial sentence and therefore impose a fine under the law of 356 currency points (Shs7.3m),” Justice Gidudu told the court
He warned that if Kazinda fails to pay, then he will spend 12 months in prison and pay a compensation of over Sh300m to the government and suffer a 10-year ban from any public office.
FDC to a lesser extent welcomed the ruling but advised government to borrow a leaf from neighbouring states and deploy disciplinary measures against corrupt individuals if corruption is to be uprooted from Uganda.
“We propose to government to copy examples from its fellow African countries that have made corruption so costly by deploying blind punitive measures like in the recent Malawian case where The Anti-Corruption Bureau in Malawi arrested its former director, Reyneck Matemba, and the Director of Malawi’s Public Procurement Agency Suzi-Banda during Malawi’s 20-week-long anti-graft campaign which the Chakwera Administration launched last month. Both are expected to be officially charged with abuse of power and could face up to 12 years in prison if found guilty.” FDC suggested
The opposition party further urged the government to walk the talk of the fight against corruption because the tax payer is the victim at last.
