By Mulengera Reporters
Saddam Gayira the President of Peoples Progressive Party (PPP), who is also a long-time aide to Mzee Jaberi Bidandi Ssali (who fathers singer Bebe Cool), was this Friday morning featured on Kabaka’s CBS Radio where he revealed the hypocrisy of the top leadership of both NUP and FDC.
Saddam Gayira, who is also a prominent figure inside IPOD and the National Consultative Forum which brings together all the registered political parties, says the leadership of both FDC and NUP has secretly been reaching out to the IPOD leadership begging to be given chance to become enrolled and become active members once again. That the NUP bosses have been pleading that Museveni convenes an urgent IPOD meeting which they can attend and have their membership operationalized so that they don’t miss out on the Shs45bn.
Gayira says this shows lack of seriousness and readiness to keep duping and taking millions of their supporters for fools. His PPP is in IPOD by virtue of having one MP (Santa Okot) in Parliament and they are going to receive up to Shs9bn through IPOD because of the Shs45bn from the EC, which five IPOD-active political parties are going to be sharing equally this being an election year.
The leaders of the five compliant parties (Jeema, DP, UPC, NRM & PPP) on Monday met with Gen Museveni (in his capacity as IPOD chairman) at State Lodge Nakasero and got him to accept that the Shs45bn be shared equally among those which have been actively attending IPOD meetings and taking photos with him.
Gayira’s PPP party is among those which have always been hurt to see NUP benefiting from IPOD cash (pocketing Shs5.7bn annually as compared to PPP’s mere Shs100m) without accepting to be active in IPOD meetings and events on grounds that such would legitimize Gen Museveni. In his Friday CBS submission Gayira sounded happy that NUP (whose bosses had a crisis meeting earlier this week and reflected on the possibility of softening and beginning to attend to IPOD business) is finally finding itself caught between a rock and hard place.
The CBS news crew managed to get NUP Secretary General David Lewis Rubongoya on the phone to respond to Gayira’s claims. And ironically, Rubongoya couldn’t give a straight answer. He merely beat around the bush saying they as NUP had reservations about the recent amendments on the Political Parties & Organizations Act that were pushed by Napak Woman MP Faith Nakut to the effect that parties can’t continue getting the EC billions, like NUP has been doing, without becoming enrolled members of IPOD. He said NUP intends to challenge that law in the Constitution Court.
Unable to give a straight answer to the question whether NUP was trying to go pleading with the IPOD Secretariat to have their membership enrolment fast-tracked as alleged by Gayira or not, Rubongoya instead said the party was going to explain its change of position to the public at a Friday media event at Kavule. This caused the CBS interviewer to laugh at his answer with unprecedented sarcasm. There are also reports that there was a meeting at Kavule during which one of the party’s spokespersons was rebuked to never speak out recklessly about the party’s position regarding the IPOD billions.
During the same broadcast, the CBS crew also interviewed Kira Municipality MP Semujju Nganda who make it clear that his PFF Freedom Party (assuming they were to qualify) would never accept receiving such IPOD billions as long as it was pegged on attending IPOD meetings and getting their leaders photographed besides Gen YK Museveni. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
