By Mulengera Reporters
Mzee Ladislaus Rwakafuzi, the veteran human rights lawyer from Toro who currently lives at his retirement home at Makerere Kagugube near LDC Kampala campus, has implored Radio Simba journalist Peter Kibazo to leverage his personal diplomatic skills and help Betty Nambooze and Muwanga Kivumbi on one hand, and their old comrades now sheltering under the Mathias Mpuuga-led DF on the other, to mend fences and stop public fights.
Currently Nambooze and Muwanga, who are determined to demonstrate their loyalty to Bobi Wine and other decision makers at Kavule-based NUP headquarters, are involved in a fierce war of words with political contemporaries and former close allies (with whom they fraternized during the Ssuubi days) who now belong to different political parties (and not NUP).
The resultant contradictions have seen bitter words being exchanged with each side determined to destroy the other. Fear to offend or desire to appease Robert Kyagulanyi aka Bobi Wine has driven Nambooze and Muwanga to move around Buganda region constituencies de-campaigning old political allies while calling on voters to only consider those with the umbrella symbol, which epitomizes Kyagulanyi’s NUP party.
Inadvertently, this has made the duo to be understood to be calling on voters in Buganda to disregard Semujju Nganda, Erias Lukwago, Mathias Mpuuga, Medard Segona, Moses Kasibante and other old comrades of theirs simply because they aren’t NUP.
Their boss Kyagulanyi, for whom this is a do or die partly because he wants to punish those who are too proud to engage in flattery and bow before him and also because he correctly realizes winning such MP positions increases IPOD funding coming to his NUP, badly wants all these otherwise high-quality legislators out of Parliament. His Kavule party has fronted candidates against each one of them.
Some say that Kyagulanyi badly wants Erias Lukwago out because he has come to the appropriate conclusion that the position of Kampala Lord Mayorship is the highest or biggest his NUP party or any other opposition grouping can win, given that Gen YK Museveni has been accepted to be invincible and one no one can defeat in the ballot box for as long as he remains the incumbent President. In a bid to deliver what their flattery-craving boss wants, the duo has put their gloves off and resorted to overtly pushing hard to see the unwanted non-NUP incumbents out.
The targeted incumbents have decisively been pushing back with the likes of DF spokesman Moses Kasibante being the most outspoken. On Monday, he was a guest on Radio Simba’s political program called Olutindo. He used the platform to respond to recent events in Masaka where Nambooze’s past was discussed during a DF campaigning event, which happened days after the Mukono Municipality MP had been there to campaign for NUP candidates. Nambooze had no kind words for Mpuuga and his key Masaka allies including Woman MP Juliet Kakande and Kimanya-Kabonera MP Abed Bwanika.
Kibazo hosted Kasibante Moses and during the Monday program, veteran opposition lawyer Rwakafuzi (a Mutoro human rights defender who has spent much of his adult years nurturing young opposition leaders and defending human rights violations victims in Museveni’s courts) sent a text message to the moderator. He directly implored Kibazo to leverage the fact that all these are his friends since he too was an associate member of the Ssuubi group, on which many of them rode to come to Parliament for the first time, and arbitrate them into ceasing fire so that de-escalation can be achieved.
Rwakafuzi made it clear that in the long term this public spurting between these former allies would produce no winner-but will leave each one of them politically exhausted and obliterated beyond repair. The truth is these are guys who know each other’s secrets and indeed Kasibante said they haven’t said even 10% of the negatives they know about Betty Nambooze.
Kibazo responded to Rwakafuzi’s plea by making it clear that deescalating the wrangling between Nambooze, Muwanga Kivumbi and the Mpuuga group isn’t possible anymore. He explained how he had previously tried but gave up when he realized that they each hold deep-seated resentment towards each other. He added that each one of them is determined to stick to their respective positions and there is no way any of them can be cajoled to ton down and move towards finding common ground.
Kasibante said there is no way his DF group can keep quiet when Muwanga Kivumbi and Nambooze are moving around telling people how whoever isn’t in NUP is working to entrench the Museveni dictatorship. He said this is deliberate dishonesty by both Muwanga and Betty Nambooze and they have a duty to keep calling out the duo.
Kasibante, who currently is seeking to become Rubaga Mayor on the DF ticket, explained how Muwanga and Nambooze are being very treacherous and ungrateful at the same time. He explained how Erias Lukwago, Medard Segona as lawyers and Mpuuga (as one who had money at that time) were selflessly there for the duo at the time when they had nothing on themselves. Kasibante recalled how Medard Segona and Lukwago spearheaded the very complicated court petitions, at the conclusion of which Muwanga managed to overcome NRM’s Faizal Kikulukunyu to become Butambala county MP following the 2012 court ruling.
That Nambooze was able to overcome imprisonment after she was charged with bribe solicitation while still serving as Mukono town council law enforcement officer only after Erias Lukwago and Segona offered her free legal services, besides releasing money to feed and transport key defense witnesses whenever any of them would be required in court.
Nambooze’s coming to Parliament in 2010 was preceded by costly litigation which involved her battling NRM’s Bakaluba Mukasa, who she successfully accused of rigging her out unfairly in 2006, up to the Supreme Court.
In all this, Lukwago and Segona were her lawyers who Kasibante says worked for free because she had no money to give them. He added that the duo also would use personal money to transport and feed witnesses besides running endless photocopying and binding and filing of court documents. Saying she wouldn’t be MP without the duo doing what they did, Kasibante Moses said whoever knows the full story of what happened is appalled to see Nambooze paying back Lukwago and Segona that way. “Rubongoya who is now sending her to drive to Masaka to destroy Mpuuga can never do for her even a fraction of what Segona and Lukwago did for her in those hard years.”
He equally said he can’t believe Nambooze can have any hesitation to endorse or campaign for Semujju’s re-election in Kira Municipality yet the man from Bijaba used to risk the wrath of comrades in FDC where he was spokesman but always campaigned for Nambooze against Najjanankumbi-fronted Moses Lukubira Bakubi. He also explained how for years, Mathias Mpuuga used personal money to support both Nambooze and Muwanga Kivumbi.
Kasibante also referred to what he termed Nambooze’s treachery that was played out in 2016. That she was facilitated with Shs50m from the Go Forward Secretariat to organize candidate Amama Mbabazi’s Mukono rally on a Friday yet on the following Monday, she desperately came to associate and share a campaigning platform with Kizza Besigye who she had earlier on abandoned for JPAM.
He claimed that they understood Nambooze still needed Besigye’s momentum (amasanyalaze) though she went to Mbabazi to access cash to be able to fund her campaign-since all Besigye had, was the popularity and not the money.
Kasibante said they understood that and never took it personal on Nambooze which is why they still worked with her even after all that treacherous conduct. Kasibante said there is plenty of real damaging information they as DF adherents have on Namboze but they haven’t yet said much because they are mature and have some restraint because they don’t want her destruction.
He suspected that Nambooze has resorted to going all the way to appease Kyagulanyi and NUP foot soldiers on social media because she has concluded that is the only way she can secure what he predicted to be her last term in Parliament.
He said the same of Muwanga Kivumbi, asserting that the duo encountered the Kyagulanyi momentum at a time they had concluded they had become so unpopular and they could only secure re-election if they rode on his wave.
“But even when that is the case, I don’t expect them not to know that there is no one that can have a permanent wave. Time comes when things change and momentum shifts to somewhere else. I’m only surprised to learn that those two comrades of mine can’t discern that anymore and have resorted to totally forgetting about old political relationships to achieve short term gains which are personal and have nothing to do with the country.”
Kasibante implored Kibazo to task both Nambooze and Muwanga Kivumbi to properly explain how mere not belonging to NUP party amounts to one being an enabler of the Museveni tyranny. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
