Reuters
by Nick Kotch
Entebbe, Uganda, December 12 -- The young politician at the eye of Uganda’s biggest international storm for years insists he is not backing down.
David Bahati MP, sponsor of the unambiguously named Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009, is ready to make his case in any forum, including a TRF workshop for parliamentary reporters in the East African country.
"If we don’t act now, they will act on us. The homos are taking over Europe, they are taking over the U.S.
"If you are against the bill then you are supporting homos. It’s simple," he told the group of journalists from a cross-section of Uganda’s media houses.
Bahati does not look or sound like a fire-and-brimstone fundamentalist and denies that right-wing Christian groups in the United States are behind the Bill. A chartered accountant aged 35, he is serving his first term as an MP for President Yoweri Museveni’s ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM).
He studied at colleges in the UK and the United States but despite his travels he appears surprised by the ferocity of some reactions in the West to the draft legislation.
The Bill widens the definition of homosexual acts by men and women, which are already illegal. But the provision which has made headlines around the world – mostly negative ones, it must be said – is the option of the death penalty for people found guilty of "aggravated homosexuality" when the victim is aged under 18 or disabled, or where the offender has HIV-AIDS or is in a position of authority.
For reporters in Uganda’s parliament it was treated as just another story and there was a degree of puzzlement about all the fuss abroad. Capital punishment has not been carried out for years despite being on the statute books for various offences.
But Bahati’s Bill has raised the stakes. Foreign donors who fund about a third of Uganda’s budget are up in arms, threatening to withdraw aid to a previously favoured government unless the draft legislation is withdrawn. Parliament's Committee on Legal and Parliamentary affairs is expected to hold public hearings on it after the Christmas break.
Bahati told the workshop, held in December in the lakeside town of Entebbe, funded by the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, that there was no going back despite what he said was intimidation by foreign governments and NGOs.
"Our message has been very clear: we shall never, ever, exchange our values for money."
"Media can help ensure that at the end of the day we have a nice piece of legislation that sums up the values and aspiration of our society," he said. No date has yet been set for the Bill’s second reading.
Unless the Bill is quietly dropped by the ruling party before its second reading, there is no likelihood that it will fail. The NRM’s caucus dominates the assembly to such an extent that another guest speaker, Museveni’s former press secretary Onapito Ekomoloit, dismissed it as a rubber stamp.
"Parliament is the public relations arm of government," the former MP said. "If it did not exist, it would not have to be invented."