After months of indecisiveness, veteran city lawyer Yusuf Nsibambi has finally accepted to serve as the new FDC EC Chairperson replacing Capt Dan Mugarura who has served for more than 10 years having taken over from founding FDC EC Chair Maj Rubaramira Ruranga. Late last year, Mugarura hesitated carrying on after presiding over party elections that ushered in Patrick Oboi Amuriat (aka POA). This prompted the delegates to mandate party Secretary General Nandala Mafabi to constitute a team that would oversee party elections in the interim period. However, Nandala has taken all this long because it hasn’t been easy for him to find a suitable party elder to take on the job. Many are reluctant to take it up because it’s largely a voluntary thankless job whereby the EC chair endures insults and attacks by defeated losers given that by its very nature elections is always a very antagonistic exercise full of contradictions. But also the painful experience Mugarura had endured working with SG Nandala Mafabi made many would-be willing volunteers to conclude that the position was after all more complicated than previously thought. Mugarura-led EC faulted the SG Nandala for unnecessary interference into their work in the runner up to the Delegates Conference. So on being approached, Yusuf Nsibambi hesitated and gave many conditions some of which he peripherally hinted on during an appearance on CBS radio political talk show recently. Reliable insider FDC sources have revealed that Nsibambi, a self-professed Besigyeist who subscribes to the Defiance ideology, has finally agreed to take up the difficult task but for a limited period of time. He will need to quit early not just because of his busy schedule but also because he will be seeking to be elected FDC flag bearer for Mawokota South MP Seat come 2021. Highly respected and wealthy Nsibambi’s acceptance to do the job has since excited POA and other members of his team as Nsibambi is associated with credibility and is deeply a principled person that can’t easily be bribed to favor anyone in party elections. He is also personally wealthy with sufficient financial resources to work without grumbling or expecting remuneration. It’s widely believed that absence of a fully-fledged EC partly explains the chaos that has been manifested in Bugiri and Arua Municipalities among other electoral areas where the ideal situation would be for the FDC to agree with other change-seeking parties to front joint candidates against the NRM. “If the Mugarura Commission was still active there is no way Kassiano Wadri and Bruce Musema would have been permitted to go after each other for Abiriga’s Arua Municipality Seat. Consensus would have been built and the party would have emerged stronger,” said an FDC insider. Nsibambi will be working with 4 other Commissioners based on regions and this team must be supported by a secretariat manned by full time election bureaucrats whose salaries Nandala and POA have promised to provide for within the party’s meager resources. A founding party member, level-headed Nsibambi is credited for generously funding party activities and recruiting many members for the party including Kampala woman MP Nabillah Nagayi. Some of the Commissioners on Mugarura’s outgoing Commission include Nakawa MP Mike Kabaziguruka and Richard Kudeba. For comments, call/text/whatsapp us on 0703164755.
