By Mulengera Reporters
Making it clear he is ready to pay whatever price, including laying down his own life, Kampala lawyer Jet Tumwebaze has vowed to lead the fight aimed at ensuring that President Museveni’s brother Aine Sodo doesn’t succeed in his bid to become the new MP for Mawogola North in Sembabule district.
Tumwebaze, a senior lawyer at Kampala Associated Advocates, a leading Kampala law firm which has previously represented President Museveni among other high-profile clients, says the Kaguta sibling must be stopped at all costs.
In a YouTube interview with journalist Faluku Twesigye of Fatwes online TV, Jet Tumwebaze (a diehard NRM supporter since his days at Makerere) said that the Aine Sodo was unfit to represent a constituency which previously had high flying children of Sembabule ably representing it in Parliament. These are Sam Kutesa and Shartis Musherure whose term ends in May next year. Here is the link to the Fatwes TV interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3C-tTJ-auo.
A tough-talking Tumwebaze accused Sodo and other Kaguta siblings of being ungrateful and unleashing crude violence and acts of torture on the people of Sembabule in order to conscript them into becoming his supporters. He wonders why Museveni, who is more powerful and more entitled, never beats up people in areas where he happens not to be popular. “This country and more so the people of Sembabule have always given a lot of support to President Museveni, who is Sodo’s brother but it beats my understand that these brothers of the President are paying us back by coming with guns and sticks to beat up and torture residents of Sembabule.”
Tumwebaze also claims the Sodo camp members are armed and are prepared to use gun violence to secure a win while subjugating the people of Sembabule. He says he is a born of Sembabule meaning he has a higher right to stand there than Sodo who he says is an alien who just came around because of the extreme contempt he has for the Sembabule natives. He pointed at the place where he will be buried and challenged Sodo to point at his burial place in Sembabule and the schools he attended in the area.
He also went personal by claiming that Sodo can’t even make an English sentence yet this is the language of Parliament. He wondered how Sembabule will be represented in an intense debate at Parliament when opposition orators like Semujju Nganda, Abdul Katuntu, Jonathan Odur and Medard Segona roar during plenary. He wondered how a poor public speaker like Sodo will be able to push back against these.
He called on the President to withdraw Sodo because he clearly doesn’t have support in Sembabule. That his recall by the President will placate Sembabule against the impending bloodshed because he (Tumwebaze) is more than prepared to lead the members of the public in Mawogola North to use sticks to confront Sodo’s guns. He says there is no way Sodo can get votes and win in Mawogola North unless he uses violence. He says the President has a duty to save the situation by chasing away Sodo. He also disputes the circumstances under which the President’s brother became the flag bearer for NRM in the area.
He asks Sodo to leave Mawogola North and return to his home in Kiruhura and offer leadership there because even in that area, people have problems and need leadership. The resentment and belligerence with which Jet Tumwesigye spoke in that Fatwes TV interview risks alienating him from voters in Mawogola which is a stronghold for Gen Museveni and NRM party. People there have for decades been used to being represented by moderate politicians and not radicals like Jet Tumwebaze has been perceived thus far.
And his pledge to deploy the Kyagulanyi-like tactics of Protest Vote, which he says is the only way Sodo can be stopped in his tracks, too could boomerang because that isn’t the language the genuine NRM supporters ought to be comfortable with because it’s synonymous with the opposition messaging.
Jet Tumwebaze, who was a student leader and vocal cadre of the Movement even during his student days at Makerere at whose Livingstone Hall he resided, says he decided to abandon his lucrative legal practice in Kampala to stand for the Mawogola North MP Seat because he realised there was need to perpetuate the great progress and transformation Shartis Musherure had achieved for the people of the area in her first five years (2021-2026) as area MP.
That as someone who the community members of Mawogola collectively educated, he feels duty-bound and obliged to stand up to Sodo and stop him because not doing so will amount to total surrender which can only happen over his dead body.
The belligerence with which Jet Tumwebaze has commenced his politics in Mawogola North has also incited Sodo’s camp members to invest in investigations aimed at unearthing and digging up his possible past involvement with property and land-related wrangling with some area residents, including his own family members. That is the kind of scrutiny a decent lawyer, like Jet Tumwebaze has always been, won’t be naturally comfortable enduring. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
