This is strange but true. Pro-change forces, comprising of actors that are opposed to President Museveni but are not very comfortable with Col Kizza Besigye’s FDC, have resolved to send emissaries to sweet talk liberal-minded leaders in the ruling NRM. Ironically one of the cadres they are targeting for possible political partnership, ahead of 2021, is Secretary General Kasule Lumumba. Sources close to efforts to constitute this 3rd forces have intimated to this news website that a group of elders like Amanya Mushega, Adam Luzindana and Gen Muntu himself will be embarking on this task of reaching out to Lumumba and put their proposals on table.
There is conviction that new political sensation Bobi Wine has the capability to transform his well-demonstrated countrywide appeal into a political movement that can get Museveni defeated in the ballot box come 2021 notwithstanding the perennial irregularities the Supreme Court has previously established to have marred our past elections. “Besigye has done very well but there is this spontaneous feeling that Bobi Wine can create a new momentum to galvanize all the hitherto-apathetic change forces into a movement that can upstage Museveni in 2021,” says a source close to plans to unveil the 3rd force in the coming months. “It will be better if Besigye embraces this arrangement but even if he doesn’t, the mutual feeling is that the Bobi Wine effect will achieve what JPAM failed in 2016.” The official added that the discontent the latest POA reshuffles in FDC party has created has escalated uneaseness and given more justification for some aggrieved FDC MPs to associate with the emerging 3rd force more openly. “This coupled with the clearly unstoppable Bobi Wine effect is going to move the population and embolden many in the NRM to make major pronouncements and this is the reason we have come up with a list of potential allies in the NRM. We are anticipating that the Bobi Wine effect will induce high profile defections similar to what Besigye enjoyed in 2006 when there was mass exodus of leaders to what became FDC,” the official explained.
BOBI PARALYSES JINJA;
Meanwhile Bobi Wine, with all his humility, has continued moving mountains in the various parts of the country. Last week alone he was in Gulu for the DP-UYD reunion and pulled mammoth crowds of the young people in their thousands just like he did in Jinja when he drove to Igeme Nabeta’s NBS Radio for a talk show on Saturday. He paralyzed traffic in the town as hundreds of cheerful supporters camped outside the radio studios waiting to greet him. During the talk show, Bobi Wine made it clear he was too sophisticated to allow any self-seeking opportunists to lead him into unnecessary verbal exchanges with mainstream opposition leaders like Kizza Besigye, Erias Lukwago or even Norbert Mao of DP. He categorically explained he has nothing but respect for the three leaders insisting that their decades of consistent opposition to the status quo is what eventually inspired him into main stream politics. He said he is in this primarily to inspire many more young people to become politically active and that his ultimate goal is to see his country transit into a more equitable political dispensation than what President Museveni has offered so far. “I’m open to working with everybody and whoever stands for a better Uganda naturally becomes my ally regardless of age, tribe or even their political dispensation. This is why I believe in the possibility of closely working with many leaders in the NRM provided they believe in a more accountable way of learning this country,” said Bobi Wine who proceeded to have more youth-centered engagements in Iganga immediately after leaving Jinja. Remarkably the Jinja crowd chased after his convoy up to Iganga. These were mostly the energetic Boda riders who came on their own without anyone prompting them.
