PDP founding President Dr. Abed Bwanika has lately been on rampage attacking especially the FDC veteran leader Col Kizza Besigye whom he says has no right to challenge President Museveni again for Presidency because he has stood and lost on four occasions. He also considers that not being a Muganda is another factor that should diminish Besigye’s suitability for Presidency. Whereas Besigye has been emerging number 2, Bwanika who has stood for President thrice (for the last 15 years) so far is yet to register any significant showing at the polls. He has always trailed in the distant last positions rarely garnering 100,000 from the whole country. This news website has established that the promoters of the DP/UYD reunion that was held at Makerere last week, where Bwanika decreed it was time for a Muganda to monopolize the political space in Buganda, are very uncomfortable with Besigye remaining politically relevant. The dilemma has been they at the same time don’t want direct war with Besigye who in 2016 garnered 3.5m votes. They instead found a willing ally in Bwanika who rightly felt he can demonize Besigye without politically losing anything. He subsequently has been on radios and TVs (by the way this has caused unprecedented publicity for him) repeating his utterances that Besigye has no moral authority to seek Baganda political support because (he says) they have supported him since 2001 but he hasn’t been able to take power. Bwanika doesn’t explain why the same voters including in Buganda have thrice found him unelectable for now 15 years. On Thursday he appeared on NBS TV’s Frontline where he shouted at Lord Mayor Erias Lukwago and called him naïve for working well with Besigye. Like on other talk shows where he has appeared before discussing the same subject, the NBS moderator ironically let Bwanika get away with it a lot. He was repeatedly asked by viewers commenting through social media why Ugandans have found him unelectable now for 15 years and he didn’t answer because the moderator never required him to. Whereas his anti-Besigye outbursts have excited some in DP/UYD reunion crusade, some others are very apprehensive fearing that his insistence on Buganda being for Baganda politicians risks alienating the group’s potential 2021 presidential candidate Bobi Wine from the rest of Uganda. This news website has also established that after the Makerere event, where Bwanika considers he was the best speaker, the DP diehards started getting phone calls from Bwanika’s supporters urging them to make him the DP presidential candidate for 2021. This is complex because some of the reunion adherents want Muwanga Kivumbi and others Micheal Mabike to be the group’s presidential candidate against Besigye and Museveni in case the duo return to the ballot paper in 2021.
BUKOTO MP SEAT;
Having realized there is no way the DP/UYD group can trust him to be their presidential candidate, given his track record of being inconsistent and financially easy to manipulate, Bwanika has settled for something he believes he can secure and that’s the Bukoto South MP Seat in Lwengo district. The current MP there is Muyanja Mbabali of the NRM. Mbabali, who is fairly a formidable candidate, got this seat after defeating DP’s Matia Nsubuga (RIP) who had earlier on defeated Alintuma Nsambu. “He realizes his unelectability at Presidency and his conviction now is that with the Bobi Wine backing and that of DP, Bukoto South will be his to win,” said knowledgeable DP insiders. The same sources added that sections of DP members are hostile to this insisting that Bwanika walks the talk by officially joining DP and contest on its ticket rather than hiding behind a united opposition in order to still come on the ticket of his PDP party whose membership remains unknown beyond the man himself and his immediate family. In their hostilities, the uncomfortable DP members insist that Bwanika must first denounce or explain his relationship with former Musevenists like Seguya of Peasants Party and FIL’s Emmanuel Tumusiime who a few years ago controversially defected back to the NRM.
