By John V Sserwaniko
KAMPALA
THERE are serious pointers that things are increasingly falling apart in the
Uganda People’s Congress – probably
Uganda’s most popular party. Suspicions that the UPC may, under the current leadership, one day go to bed with President Yoweri Museveni have not helped the matters
WHEN President Museveni spoke on the Buganda
Kingdom owned Central Broadcasting Services radio last month, he sounded unusually magnanimous to the UPC and particularly former president Milton Obote’s son, Jimmy Akena.
Mr. Museveni said unlike his fellow MPs, Mr Akena, the Lira Municipality Member of Parliament, behaved more responsibly by restraining the crowd against becoming riotous during Mabira demonstration.
The likes of Akena, Museveni said, were a kind the government would easily work with in promoting the interests of the country. The president’s remarks created suspicion among UPC members who wondered how Mr. Museveni, who passionately hated Mr. Akena’s late father for all his lifetime, would all of a sudden have so much praise of him in public.
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FAILED?: Mrs Miria Obote |
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SUSPICION: Mr Akena |
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CRITICAL: Prof. Rubaihayo |
Angry UPC members suggested that Mr Akena calls a news conference to clarify president Museveni’s remarks. “Tell me – what do you do if a whole Head of State rightly praises you for what you did during a demonstration? I felt there was nothing to clarify,” Mr. Akena told Inside Politics during a lengthy interview last week.
Despite Akena being adamant he had any explaining to do, rumours soon swept through Uganda House that the youthful MP’s entry into Museveni’s cabinet was being discussed.
That rumour, says Akena, was crafted by “those people out to discredit me politically” including a group in the UPC renegade faction. For starters, that is the present UPC – factions and more factions.
But outside UPC, Mr. Museveni’s remarks too created some unease among members of the G6, a loose grouping under which the major six political parties extended support in the demonstration. To many G6 members, UPC began to seem a very unreliable ally.
Subsequent events would only serve to instigate this fear. Why, for example, did the UPC skip the Christ the King press conference on April 17 which the G6 leaders-from Forum for Democratic Change, the Democratic Party, the Conservative Party, JEEMA and Abed Bwanika- addressed demanding the immediate release of their colleagues who had been arrested in the aftermath of the April 12 Mabira demonstration?
Mr. Akena told Inside Politics that his party president Miria Obote missed the news conference because she didn’t get the invitation on time. “There was no bad will whatsoever on our part, otherwise you don’t have to have attended the press conference to have been in agreement with what the G6 leaders articulated there,” he argued.
Matters have not been helped by the fact that nine UPC MPs have rarely been active on the floor of parliament. Prompted on this, Mr Akena, himself a very silent legislator, said politics was about strategy.
“I choose to speak when there is reason to do so, otherwise I am aware there is a lot you can achieve for your people without necessary making noise for the government on the floor of parliament,” he told Inside Politics.
Visiting State House
Sections of UPC members are also unhappy that prior to praising Mr. Akena on CBS, Mr. Museveni had hosted members of the late Obote’s family at State House. Inside Politics could not independently verify this but sources in Uganda House allege the visit actually took place on Tuesday April 17. Mr Akena has dismissed the allegation.
“Nothing could be further from the truth because the only time I went to state house was about August last year as part of the peace team which had gone to consult with the president,” he told Inside Politics.
But sceptics continue to allege that Mr. Akena’s prominent role in the ongoing LRA peace talks was calculated by Mr. Museveni to raise the youthful MP’s profile and prepare him for an impending posting in cabinet.
But Mr Akena dismisses this suggestion saying his participation in the talks is a service to his people and an opportunity for UPC to champion the cause for the suffering people of northern
Uganda.
“Its public knowledge those people have suffered enough and, our political differences aside, any serious leader should do all he/she can to help end the war,” Mr Akena said.
Internal rifts
UPC is dodged by serious internal wrangles with the move to throw out Mr. Sam Ngude Odaka as chairman for Milton Obote Foundation (MOF) on one hand and a renegade faction led by Mrs Obote’s former National Chairman, Prof. Patrick Rubaihayo on the other, insisting the party president has failed and should quit.
It emerged in the press last week that, because of the ongoing court case by the UPC party president lodged against MOF governors, the foundation wouldn’t be in position to extend any funding to the UPC, as that would further complicate the court process.
Ms Miria was quoted saying, the party would limp on even without funding from MOF.
The court case seeks to wrestle the leadership of the Foundation from long serving chairman; Mr Odaka who critics say hasn’t been supportive enough of the UPC.
It’s indeed a much bigger problem because late last year, it took the intervention of police to restrain Mr. Chris Opio, another UPC official, who sought to forcefully attend an Annual General Meeting for MOF members.
Mr Odaka however insists that he won’t quit because he single handedly saved the MOF properties from being taken by President Museveni’s government.
But Akena says it wasn’t true that Mr. Odaka fought alone to restrain the government from taking over UPC properties.
“Everybody contributed, I remember my late father contributing from where we were in terms of ideas and keeping in touch with the team in
Kampala as the court process proceeded.”
Mr Akena wants Odaka and his team to “respond to the real accountability issues UPC members are raising like accountability for the printing press and the People Newspaper among other projects.
Prof Rubaihayo, a former UPC national chairman, says it’s a contradiction for Ms Miria to have sued MOF in which she is a governor. She dragged the Odaka’s to court in her capacity as UPC president and Rubaihayo wonders what will happen should MOF lawyers seek to have her as their witness in the court case against the UPC.
Govt concessions
There are also concerns that within less than a year after Dr Obote’s death, the former president’s family has already received Shs 300m in pension and what unconfirmed sources claim is an additional Shs 500m from the government for unspecified reasons. The government on record time also renovated two family houses – in Kololo and Lira.
To Mr. Akena, however, the concessions from government don’t amount to favours at all “because these are things well stipulated in the law and to which we are entitled. Unlike Amin, my father presided over a lawfully elected government and you can’t compare the two.’
If the Amin family felt deprived, he advised, they should use the law to seek justice.
According to a recent document by former national chairman Prof Patrick Rubaihayo and Mr. Darlington Sakwa, party members want an explanation on why unlike other parties, Miria Obote’s UPC has not found it necessary to mount an active recruitment and rejuvenation drive.
But commenting on this seeming complacency, an independent analyst doubted it had anything to do with the party having a conspiracy to advantage Museveni, saying “all this apparent lack of progress we see in the UPC is a rude reminder of the vacuum Obote’s death cast on the past”.
Another concern has to do with what members term, deliberate failure by more experienced party leaders to advise their less sophisticated party president that participating in the dialogue Mr. Museveni organised in the aftermath of last year’s elections amounted to legitimising “Museveni rigged elections which the dictatorship desperately wanted”.
It will be recalled that whereas parties like the FDC hesitated taking part in the talks, UPC whose former leader, the late Obote always described Museveni as a every unreliable man, eagerly participated and was the last one to pull out.
The manner in which Rubaihayo was kept away from one of the follow up meetings the UPC delegation had with NRM secretary general Amama Mbabazi only fuelled more suspicion.
Enter Nekyon
The very close relationship the current leadership has with Mr. Adoko Nekyon, who vehemently fought UPC-first in DP and later on in NRM- has also left party members very afraid.
They recall how he fell out with Obote in the 1960s and went on to discredit him when he told the world how UPC had forced its way back to power by rigging the 1980 elections.
In fact, to many in the UPC, it’s Nekyon who originated the claim that the 1980 polls were rigged, something for which (critics claim) the NRM rewarded him with a cabinet post when they came to power in 1986.
Matters have not been helped by the fact that Mrs Obote has been accused of either refusing or failing to work with UPC pillars like Cecilia Ogwal, the late Okullo Epak, Prof. Rubaihayo, Mary Tiberondwa, Dr Rwanyarare and Yona Kanyomozi, and Aggrey Awori, who later defected to the NRM, accusing Mrs Obote of running the UPC like a family business.
Mrs Obote’s critics also say the youth have not been spared either. The articulate and vocal Higenyi Kemba was frustrated and de-campained in Butaleja by UPC National Chairman Badru Wegulo.
Kemba’s colleague Patrick Aroma, who still works with Miria, is these days treated with suspicion partly because State House paid his tuition at Makerere
University.
President Museveni has always dangled groceries to sons of his predecessors, pampering them with top jobs thereby turning them into allies. He appointed Wasswa Lule, son to former President Yusuf Lule, Deputy Inspector General of regional coordinator of ISO; while Maurice Kagimu, formerly of the Democratic Party and son to former DP leader Benedicto Kiwanuka is a now minister. General Tito Okello’s son, Okello Oryem, was first appointed Minister of state for Sports and then transferred to the more high profile Minister of state for International relations.
There are increasing suspicions that Mr Akena could soon be in President Museveni’s cabinet.
“It can’t happen,” the Lira Municipality told inside politics last week. He said he would never serve Museveni, a man so much loathed by his father. Despite all these conspiracy theories of jumping into bed with Museveni, members believe that the UPC current leadership has failed to deliver, having firmly placed the party on its deathbed. That is why senior UPC members – Rubaihayo, Sakwa and others are leading an internal campaign to remove Mrs Obote from the leadership of the party.
Posted by A Good Muganda,
Published by Korir, African Press in Norway / African Press International, africanpress@chello.no
