The administration of Uganda President
Yoweri Kaguta Museveni has rejected MP David Bahati's anti-gay bill,
Uganda's Daily Monitor reported on Monday.
Bahati's controversial bill would
increase the penalties for being gay in a nation where it is already
a crime. The measure, first introduced in 2009, proposed putting
repeat offenders to death under certain circumstances. It also would
have criminalized discussion of homosexuality and penalized a person
who knowingly rents to a gay or lesbian person.
Lawmakers closed their legislative
session in May without voting on the measure, but a defiant Bahati
insisted he would re-introduce his bill in February.
According to the Daily Monitor,
on the advice of Adolf Mwesige, the ruling party lawyer, Uganda's
Cabinet decided to drop the measure during a meeting on Wednesday.
“We agreed that government should
search the law archives and get some of the laws, enforce them rather
than having another new piece of legislation,” an unnamed source
was quoted as saying. “He [Mwesige] said the bill is overtaken by
events and that donors and other sections of the public were not
comfortable.”
Bahati told
the paper that the administration should stop “playing
hide-and-seek games,” and reiterated previous claims that children
remain at risk.
“The future of this country's
children will be determined by the people's representatives in
Parliament,” Bahati said.