KAMPALA– Leader of Opposition, Joel Ssenyonyi has urged the elderly leaders in Government to familiarize themselves with the language of Gen Z if they are lead a nation, where majority of the population are young people.
This followed a complaint made by Raphael Magyezi, Minister of Local Government, accusing Ssenyonyi of using extreme language when he said the Minister was “Mad”, saying the description bordered to questioning his mental state.
This prompted Minister Magyezi to demand the Deputy Speaker, Tayebwa to have the remarks expunged from Parliament’s record, so as not to confuse future readers of the Hansard that the Minister was mentally ill at the time.
“My statement clearly stipulated areas that are sinking that we all need to hold together, that we all must work on for the good of all of us. When I said I can see Magyezi is “Mad”, the word mad means many things including angry, I saw you were angry. That is what I meant because. I don’t know Magyezi for being mad in the sense of being mentally ill. You see the Gen Z know these new English words, so our senior comrade needs to learn them. But for clarity, I didn’t mean you are mentally disturbed because I don’t think you are, I meant that you were angry,” said Ssenyonyi.
“The LOP while reading his statement, he read some statement which I didn’t agree with and I think he saw me shaking my head and he said, I can see Magyezi is mad. I want to confirm that I am fully in charge of my faculty. And I want to agree with you that not agreeing with you must have triggered that, just as slip of the tongue. I don’t think the Leader of Opposition wanted to say that Magyezi is mad and that it is recorded like that in the handsard. But for me, I am normal, straight forward,” said Magyezi.
The statement Minister Magyezi contested was in reference to Ssenyonyi’s response to President Museveni’s State of Nation Address, where he noted, that “when the country is sinking, we cannot all just become spectators to cheerlead those who are steering our country to complete destruction, but we take a step forward to put up a spirited fight to redeem our country from those who wield power that they use irresponsibly and contrary to the citizenry wishes and aspirations.”
“I thought that was going to the extreme, it isn’t a question of someone who is mad,” noted Magyezi.
