UgandaToday: The Echo of the Gavel: Isaac Ssemakadde’s Poetic Swipe at Rebecca Kadaga
By Uganda Today Political Correspondent
In a moment heavy with irony, Uganda Law Society President Isaac Ssemakadde has unleashed a poetic rebuke at former Speaker of Parliament Rebecca Alitwala Kadaga, reminding her of the ghosts of 2017 that now haunt her political journey.
Then, Kadaga presided over the infamous constitutional amendment that scrapped the presidential age limit, paving the way for President Yoweri Museveni’s continued grip on power. The removal, marred by allegations of bribery and military deployment within Parliament, left scars on Uganda’s democratic fabric.
Now, as Kadaga laments her bruising defeat at the National Resistance Movement (NRM) Delegates’ Conference—citing massive voter bribery, intimidation, and abuse of office—Ssemakadde has responded with stinging poetic irony:
The Echo of the Gavel
By Isaac Ssemakadde
She weeps now,
over ballots bought with silver,
over voices bent by threats,
over soldiers patrolling the corridors of choice.
Yet, how the wheel turns!
For in 2017, beneath her gavel’s echo,
bags of coin unsealed the vault of time,
and bayonets grazed the very floor of Parliament.
The Constitution bled,
its age torn away—
a gift wrapped in deceit,
handed to the one who feeds on eternity.
Now she cries, “Bribery! Intimidation! Abuse!”
But Madam, was it not you
who set the feast,
who laid the table with poisoned fruit?
Did you not cheer the dance of power
when a nation’s future was auctioned
for thirty pieces of silver more than once?
So taste now the harvest of your planting.
The storm you summoned
has come to sit upon your own doorstep.
Ride the benchmark, Madam Speaker Emeritus,
for the law remembers,
and history writes without trembling hands.
Ssemakadde’s words serve as both a poetic indictment and a reminder of the cyclical nature of political betrayal. What Kadaga now decries—bribery, intimidation, and high-handed abuse of office—are the very instruments she once wielded or tolerated in 2017.
As Ugandans watch the unfolding drama within the NRM, many are left wondering: Is this a case of poetic justice, or the inevitable fate of those who set precedents without imagining they would one day be consumed by them?
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