By Mulengera Reporters
Some of the incumbent MPs, who missed out on the NUP party tickets have spoken out making it clear that their fighting spirit hasn’t been dampened. Not as yet.
They have vowed not to surrender but look the bully in the eye and vigorously fight back. They are prepared to call out the mediocrity, dictatorship and autocracy at Kavule for what it is.
Busiro East’s Medard Segona, whose ouster touched off angry reactions from thousands of Ugandans online, says that contrary to what his tormentors might have purposed and sought to achieve, he isn’t broken but he is instead prepared to continue to be in the fight for a better-governed country while being there for his people.
The excellent and much-admired legislator, whose name was deleted at the last-minute following intense internal debate among decision makers at Kavule, says that he will be guided by his people and stakeholders in the constituency.
He says he will be convening a huge town hall meeting in his constituency on Wednesday so that his bosses, the voters, get the opportunity to advise on what he should do next. He says he wants inclusive decision making, which is why his decision has to be preceded by adequate consultation.
Segona, whose NUP betrayal was last month prophesied by Speaker Anita Among who implored him during a plenary session not to belittle Minister David Bahati who had just lost NRM primaries, isn’t ruling out running as an independent or under any other platform. His professional brother and mentor Erias Lukwago’s PFF is an option for Segona, just like Mathias Mpuuga’s Democratic Front party.
He says he will immediately announce his next move at the conclusion of the Wednesday town hall meeting. He faces understandable re-election challenges on the ground, which any 3rd term incumbent is expected to face but the truth is that Segona was polishable and would still win under the NUP banner. Kavule only needed to hand him back the flag and leave the rest to him as opposed to the humiliation he endured being made to compete with a low-grade politician like Mathias Walukagga.
But Kavule was about retribution because Mr. Bobi Wine, the so-called Principal, is naturally a paranoid thin-skinned person who is never comfortable being surrounded by people who are better than him at anything.
The other cause of retribution against Segona relates to his refusal to append signature and join Kavule-instigated Theodore Sekikubo in demonizing Mpuuga over the Shs500m token of appreciation he received from Parliament.
He rightly demanded to be convinced first about wrongdoing on Mathias Mpuuga’s part before appending his signature and joining the “Mpuuga yalya” choir. To Kyagulanyi, this was abominable under the mantra of “Bobi Wine tasobya.”
Segona’s other crime, besides possessing very good credentials which caused him to be envied by the unsophisticated inside NUP, related to his declaration of interest in becoming the next NUP President towards 2031, when Bobi Wine will be becoming ineligible under the current party Constitution framework.
That is one position for which David Lewis Rubongoya, the golden boy and the NUP Crown Prince, is already being prepared to take up five years from now. Any keen observer ought to already have seen and taken note of the fact that the way flag bearers have been chosen and deployed is targeted at preparing the party and paving way for that reality-namely the Rubongoya Presidency.
It’s the reason many Rubongoya enablers (such as Butembe’s Maria Nattabi in Jinja, Yusuf Nkerettanyi of Kalungu East, Sulaiman Kiwanuka of Nakifuuma, Martin Ssejjemba of Mawokota South and a few others) had to be prioritized on the latest flag bearers’ lists.
What is being planned on how the NUP Presidency is to be inherited post-Bobi Wine is synonymous with high stakes & highly sophisticated political games which many of the foot soldiers, unsophisticated as always, won’t readily understand. They will only wake up to this inevitable reality (the Rubongoya Presidency) when its too late. Some Kavule insiders are already envisaging the FDC-like situation that played out as Nandala Mafabi turned tables on Dr. Kizza Besigye and other colleagues at Katonga.
So, Medard Segona had to pay the price for unilaterally declaring interest in becoming the next NUP President after Bobi Wine.
And gratefully, Segona says he saw it all coming and wasn’t that much surprised upon being purged by the NUP leadership at Kavule.
But what has made many of his supporters hurt and feel insulted even more is the fact that Kavule has replaced such a political colossus with a very unsophisticated low-grade politician in the names of singer Mathias Walukagga. Many are doubting that Walukagga will be able to be synonymous with even a fraction of what the high quality Medard Segona has been since 2011 when he first joined Parliament.
On her part, Joyce Bagala Ntwata (another Mpuuga ally) says that she is undeterred by NUP card deprivation. She was disregarded in favour of film star Proscovia Mukisa aka Naboosa who is Mityana Municipality MP Francis Zzaake’s very special friend and handler.
Bagala says she is focussed on the larger struggles aimed at making Mityana, Singo, Busujju, Buganda and Uganda better. She says she isn’t broken. That she is more re-energized to fight on than ever before.
She said in a Tuesday morning interview that she will be deepening her relationship with Buganda Kingdom, especially Katikkiro’s office, as she looks forward to keep leading her people in Mityana. She too isn’t ruling out running as an independent.
Makindye West’s Allan Sewanyana (who Kavuke resented and never liked from day one largely because of his admiration and undisguised belief in giants like Kizza Besigye, Erias Lukwago, Semujju Nganda etc) says it was injustice for the party to give the flag to Zahara Luyirika who never even expressed interest for it during the vetting exercise.
She had desired to become Kampala Woman MP only to be switched and bounced back to Makindye West after the streetwise Shamim Malende, who Kavule had written off months earlier, refused to die and proved too risky to drop. She planned to cause trouble, make a lot of noise and demonstrate by doing all sorts of things including undressing and crying in public in order to attract attention to her political mistreatment inside NUP.
Even with the ticket, which she was given for temporary convenience, decision makers at both Kavule and Magere are not going to ever forgive or accept Shamim Malende. She will never be an insider because many at Kavule find her to be complicated and elusive to work with.
The principal resents her character of being elusive, unreliable and always disappearing unceremoniously. This elusiveness simply means she is never available to be assigned anything by the party. She also doesn’t take calls and on average changes her sim card every two weeks. She also doesn’t keep her word, which makes her to look exactly like her predecessor Nabillah Nagayi.
Kavule fears that (now that she has been provoked by being required to compete with Zahara as opposed to getting the flag on a silver platter on humanitarian grounds having been ill and away for all those years) Malende is going to become more belligerent and keep menacing the party exactly like her mentor and predecessor Nabillah Nagayi used to do (blackmail) to FDC and Dr. Kizza Besigye for the 15 years or three terms she served as Kampala Woman MP.
Kavule insiders also claim that Shamim Malende doesn’t fully support Ronald Balimwezo for the Kampala Lord Mayor job because of religion and also because he has been a close ally of Zahara Luyirika.
Some want Bobi Wine to commission an investigation into claims that Malende is secretly supporting and working with Erias Lukwago, because he is her fellow Muslim, in order to fail Balimwezo (a Mulokole Born Again Christian) who has the NUP flag.
Party lawyers are also uncomfortable with Shamim Malende who they say does nothing in Court yet she is always quick to own their cases and bribe TV and online journalists to portray her in their videos to be the main lawyer doing the political prisoners’ cases whereas not.
Party lawyers feel that she likes the limelight a lot and always takes their shine without actually inputting much into the cases they handle.
The NUP legal team members are hurting that, because of her social media prowess, Shamim Malende ends up portraying herself as more important and consequential on such political prisoners’ cases than she actually is. They are tired of being overshadowed by her. They intend to call her out in the coming days, weeks and months if this bad behaviour and provocative conduct doesn’t stop. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
