By Mulengera Reporters
Led by former UYD President Ismail Kirya, a group of DP youth leaders on Saturday convened a news conference at Batva Hotel in Kampala where they inter-alia criticized party President Norbert Mao for not doing enough to ensure that the ex-DP Vice President Juliet Rainer Kafiire, who died a few days ago, gets a befitting send off. (Detailed presser video can be accessed via this YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0PgpYzB3AuU&t=241s; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pt-lhl8uzi0; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0QnQ5pF8pk&t=194s)
One of the wealthiest and most generous female leaders DP has ever produced, Rainer Kafiire was for many years the only elected leader (MP) Uganda’s oldest political party had in Gen YK Museveni’s Parliament. She used to be the DP diehard who represented Kibuku County in Bukedi sub region and this is something that used to perturb the President a lot.
Gen Museveni was disturbed because, to his mind, in that part of the country, every elected leader had to be NRM. Or else you won on the opposition ticket and got captured into NRM as was the case with Pallisa’s Dr. Stephen Malinga and Samia Bugwe’s Aggrey Awori in Busia.
Rainer Kafiire kept defiantly getting re-elected (largely because of her philanthropy projects in the community which Museveni’s money couldn’t neutralize) and successfully resisted being captured to become a Musevenist. Money was never her problem because she had married in money and a lot of it, as her husband was a wealthy German national.
In Parliament, she was in CA which enacted the 1995 Constitution and went on to be in the 6th Parliament (1996-2001) and the subsequent ones. She was always proudly DP and never denounced nor abandoned the party she very much loved.
Even when the party got messed up a lot under the leadership of John Sebaana Kizito, whom she deputized, Kafiire proudly hang around while fighting for reforms within DP as opposed to using that as an excuse to defect to NRM like Awori and Malinga conveniently did, citing hopelessness and endless chaos in UPC as the cause of their political pivoting.
As years passed, Rainer Kafiire aged and opportunistic diseases, which escalate with aging, took their toll on her. She had been unwell and medication for many years preceding her death.
It’s against this background that Kirya’s DP@Heart pressure group members used their Saturday media conference to demand that President Museveni and the leadership at Parliament consider having an official burial for the political colossus from Kibuku since the same had previously been declared for much less deserving souls when they departed from this earthly world.
They castigated Mao, who Sebaana defeated at the 2005 DP delegates conference at Namboole where Kafiire was voted Vice President, for not taking up the matter yet he has some clout from within inside NRM.
That Mao has what it takes to instigate the President and the leadership at Parliament to do the needful so that Rainer Kafiire can be buried with all the deserving honors. She was a woman, but among those who pioneered competing with men for MP positions and not affirmative action seats.
She was MP Kibuku County and used to defeat Museveni-sponsored male candidates for that Parliamentary Seat. It was Afande Saleh Kamba, a former kadogo/child soldier in NRA, who eventually overwhelmed and defeated Rainer Kafiire, bringing to an end an eventful legislative career.
Museveni was so grateful and offered Saleh Kamba a ministerial position only to be frustrated by the Rebecca Kadaga-led appointments committee of Parliament, which refused to approve him. That same seat was subsequently inherited by a better credentialed Jenifer Namuyangu, a fellow Musevenist, who defeated Kamba and was immediately made a Minister.
This was all because of the fact that the standards Kafiire had set, had raised the stature of Kibuku County, making it hard for Museveni to ignore or disregard whoever came after her, provided he or she was politically acceptable to State House. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
