Vincent Bagiire, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee has called for the expeditious appointments of Ambassadors in four Missions including; Tehran, Abuja, Ottawa and Nairobi after MPs discovered that some of the Missions have operated for three years without ambassadors.
The call was made during the meeting between Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Public Accounts Committee, held to consider the 2024/25 Auditor General’s report, after Asuman Basalirwa (Bugiri Municipality) sought clarification on why Uganda’s Mission in Tehran has no ambassador, following the death of Muhammad Kisambira who served as head of mission in Tehran, until his death on 4th August 2023.
“Ever since Ambassador Muhammad Kisambira died, the embassy is lacking leadership. There are staff there who are competent but the embassy has no leadership up to now. I want to understand what exactly is taking this long to have an ambassador and we have candidates here,” Basalirwa said.
Vincent Bagiire, Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Foreign Affairs admitted the leadership vacuum at the Tehran Mission but went on to reveal that the same vacuum is being experienced in Nigeria, Canada and Kenya Missions, prompting calls by MPs to clarify how long these Missions had stayed without leaders.
“The number of years these missions have not had heads of mission, I think for Abuja it’s around eight months, but I stand corrected by colleagues. For Tehran it’s two years. For Nairobi it’s also around two years. The late Galliwango died, I know it was in January, around 17th January 2023 I think, okay, three years and then Ottawa is less than a year,” he revealed.
The Vice Chairperson for Public Accounts Committee, Gorreth Namugga asked Bagiire the impact the absence of Ambassadors in the four missions is having on Uganda’s diplomacy, to which Bagiire said the Ministry of Foreign Affairs hadn’t quantified the impact of the power vacuum and the vacuum is being covered by chargé d’affaires as per the international law, the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations that provides that if the head of mission is away there shall be a chargé d’affaires (CDA).
“We have not quantified the impact but allow me to say that all the operations of the mission as they should be because we have the CDA who is recognised by that country as someone leading the mission and what we have done is to ensure that all these embassies, even if they had only one person at the level of ambassador, we deployed someone at the level of ambassador. They are not head of mission substantive but they are the level ambassador and they are taking care of this commission,” explained Bagiire.
However, Namugga rejected the explanation given and accused the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of bypassing the problem of power vacuum, yet no study has been undertaken on the impact of the power vacuum.
“You cannot say we have remained three years without a substantive head of mission in Nairobi and you say cannot quantify this, tell us the impact. We can’t even keep without head of missions and business is normal as usual. So, we cannot take it as light as it is. When we don’t have the head of missions, substantive, there is a lot to lose as a country. So, we can’t just sweep it under the carpet. So, they are going to give you a calculator to quantify the impact of failure to have these heads of missions in these so strategic countries,” noted Namugga.
Bagiire later informed the Committee that the Heads of missions for these embassies without substantive heads is being concluded and the mission heads will be appointed sooner than later.
Basalirwa also raised concern over the failure by Uganda to establish Diplomatic relations with Pakistan, yet the nation is a nuclear power and there are many Ugandans studying in Pakistan due to it affordable education.
“Pakistan which is one of the nuclear powers and a very big economy, we have no embassy in Pakistan. And it raises a very big concern. And you are talking about Ugandans. There are actually more Ugandans in Pakistan because education there is one of the cheapest around that area. That we don’t have an embassy in one of the nuclear powers of the world and one of the biggest economies around is something that I think we need to interest ourselves into,” he noted.
Although Bagiire acknowledged the importance of Pakistan in Uganda’s diplomatic missions, he explained that Uganda now has 38 Missions and these Missions operate in a manner that if a nation has an Embassy in Tanzania, it is also accredited to Zambia, and this is why Uganda’s Embassy in Kenya is also accredited to the Seychelles.
“And that is really on account of being frugal and because we can’t be everywhere. But I take the point that Pakistan should be a country of interest, a nuclear power, and we shall make that point to cabinet to see that perhaps we have a presence in Pakistan, but that may mean a trade-off whereby we retire one embassy and open one in Pakistan,” explained Bagiire.
