By Mulengera Reporters
Freedom Party (PFF) chief promoter Philip Wafula `Ogutu has responded to thousands of foot soldiers who over the weekend took to social media to register their pain and detriment over the fact that the Katonga adherents are soon going to have their own party. Petty and unsophisticated as always, the NUP foot soldiers described Freedom Party’s registration and gazetement as betrayal against Bobi Wine.
Many of them took to social media (the only platform still available to millions of oppressed Ugandans) and asserted the fact that PFF can successfully complete the process for registration was proof of connivance between Dr. Kizza Besigye’s group at Katonga on one hand and Gen Museveni’s NRM on the other. To such simplistic and thin-skinned actors, Uganda must have only one vibrant opposition party, and that has to be NUP, or else there is conspiracy against Mr. Wine!
Over the weekend, this talk consumed many such foot soldiers online and it’s the thing Wafula Ogutu felt obliged to respond to during the Freedom Party’s Monday news conference at Katonga. Wafula Ogutu, a conspicuous special media user, wondered why supporters and members of NUP, which is already existing and operating as a political party in the same Museveni-led Uganda, can accuse PFF, which is just being birthed, of being favored by the regime.
If it indeed takes favor from Gen Museveni for a party to register, exist and be appropriately regulated by the EC, then NUP, which is already in existence, must have benefited from such regime benevolence much more than PFF, which is even yet to be born and issued with birth certificate by the same EC, Wafula Ogutu sarcastically asserted.
He made it clear that Uganda is a pluralistic society, politically speaking, and there is no reason why NUP foot soldiers should be hurting and having sleepless nights simply because someone else has incorporated and registered a different political party. That exactly is what democracy is all about-diversity and there being many different political parties so that people (however few, they don’t have to be many) can freely belong to the one they are comfortable falling under.
It’s also wrong for anyone to argue that, because they are few and not as many as those subscribing to NUP, the Wafula Ogutus of this world have no right to form a party of their own and exist as such. Minority co-existing besides the majority (which foot soldiers take their NUP to be) is the essence of democracy. It’s as simple as that and one doesn’t need a PhD to understand that.
We don’t have to be many or the majority in order for us to enjoy our right to exist and politically associate as such. That is what Article 29 of the Constitution, and to an extent the entire Chapter four, is all about. These are the basic things the Secretary General David Lewis Rubongoya should be teaching to NUP foot soldiers at the NUP Leadership Academy at Kamwokya. They are arguments which ought not to be made by anymore because they are simply sickening and unsustainable.
That Wafula Ogutu, Kizza Besigye, Erias Lukwago, Semujju Nganda, Wasswa Birigwa, Nyanjura Doreen and others choosing to come together to form a political party and associate under that, amounts to conspiracy against Bobi Wine! How ironical? Very illogical! Very simplistic! What, by the way, would stop such people from advocating a ban of all other political parties so that Uganda becomes a one party state under President Robert Kyagulanyi’s NUP?
He who demands no other opposition party should be formed and allowed to exist, simply because there is NUP which currently is the dominant one, will predictably have no restraint or reason not to demand enactment of one party state once in power! How Stalinist? What will stop them from arguing that, since Kyagulanyi is the President and is governing well, existence of other parties in opposition to him is an act of betrayal? We had better be cautious, as a country, because logically this comes to the same thing.
He who says today that we don’t need any other opposition party in Uganda because NUP is sufficient will have no shame suggesting existence of one party state in Uganda once Kyagulanyi of NUP is President and is governing the country well. Logically, it comes to the same thing-and citizens’ eyes had better become wide open, lest we risk waking up to this possibility when it is already too late.
He who perceives formation of PFF/Freedom party as an act of sabotage and betrayal against Bobi Wine will equally perceive existence of opposition parties in Uganda, once the same Mr. Wine is in power, as betrayal to the new President.
And let’s call it out for what it is. People who think that way are actually more dangerous than Gen Museveni (more intolerant than him without realizing) and will predictably advocate banning of all the other political parties the day their favorite Mr. Wine is in power with NUP becoming the ruling party. Only God knows if and when that (NUP becoming the ruling party) will ever happen.
Otherwise, as Wafula Ogutu cautiously observed at the Katonga news conference, someone had better write and publicize a piece explaining how mere formation of the Freedom Party (and mere decision by Erias Lukwago, Semujju Nganda, Wasswa Birigwa, Salaam Musumba, Wafula Ogutu, Ingrid Turinawe, Doreen Nyanjura & Co not to become NUP members) amounts to being mean and betraying Bobi Wine and his group at Kavule. It will be helpful if whoever authors such a piece owns it by disclosing his or her real names as opposed to hiding behind the anonymity that social media permits.
Why should anyone hurt, get headache and fail to sleep at night simply because Erias Lukwago & Co have formed their own PFF as opposed to becoming NUP members? Wouldn’t that be extreme intolerance that is synonymous with tyranny and autocracy? What the Katonga guys have done is to go through a lot of hassle to have their own party, following the extreme persecution and humiliation Nandala Mafabi and POA subjected them to. Their well-stated intention is to use that as a platform to carry on with their life-long struggle against misrule by Gen Museveni and his NRM, not NUP.
They have not even declared they intend to field a Presidential Candidate to compete with Mr. Wine but the so-called foot soldiers, thin-skinned and limited in understanding as always, are already hurting as if Katonga has fired any bullet in their direction.
Why then would anyone of NUP be hurting? How does Katonga’s concentration on attacking Gen Museveni diminish the NUP? How come that before even Gen Museveni’s equivalent of foot soldiers push or fight back, it’s the NUP foot soldiers fighting back dedicating all efforts towards demonizing the Freedom Party? Strange and hard to understand.
It speaks to lack of sophistication and inability to understand basic things, a reality the NUP Leadership Academy should ideally be mitigating. Very unlikely that such foot soldiers’ hostility towards PFF has been instigated by Gen Museveni. Not possible. For he is too busy and preoccupied with many other things to have his apparatus coordinate such antagonism.
It’s simply reflective of the extent to which a significant fraction of the NUP foot soldiers’ fraternity is incapable of correctly understanding and appreciating basic simple things. That is what it is. Yet, the bitter truth is that governance and getting into the business of correctly understanding certain things is more complicated than a lot of people think.
The management at the Leadership Academy at Kamwokya had better put in place modules which help their foot soldiers to become more sophisticated than they currently seem.
There is much more that the tutors at that Leadership Academy ought to touch on and impart objective and enduring knowledge to the so-called foot soldiers because it’s what they need more than anything else-and not the Kyankwanzi-like indoctrination of ‘Principal tasobya/he is infallible.’
Foot soldiers and millions of Ugandans ought to be repeatedly explained to about the difference between politicking/populism and the effective governing of the country. Many will be surprised to learn of the bitter fact that effectively governing and getting recovery of the country like Uganda, after Museveni’s endless decades of misrule, will be much harder and much more complicated than the struggle to remove Museveni has been.
There is a lot that has gone wrong under Museveni yet Ugandans won’t be patient enough to understand that. You become a President, riding on the populism wave that is synonymous with Kyagulanyi-ism, and people (of the foot soldier type) will be expecting quick fixes and things to get better immediately the next day.
Populism creates high expectations, just like the Trump experience in the US has demonstrated, yet the real governance of getting things done (and being able to govern effectively) is much more complicated and takes much more.
This is why the Kamwokya Leadership Academy should be used to create understanding among the millions of foot soldiers to prepare for that day-if at all Mr. Wine ever becomes President. Otherwise failing to leverage genuine political education in order to manage high population expectations, which are the natural result of the Bobi Wine-like populism, will result into Uganda quickly becoming ungovernable for Kyagulanyi-should he ever become President.
The political school at Kamwokya should be used to render genuine political education as opposed to deceptively telling foot soldiers and other trainees the deceit they want to hear or come for the sessions expecting to hear-namely that Mr. Wine’s problem is Besigye, is Erias Lukwago, is Semujju Nganda, is Katonga! How different will such indoctrination then be from what is prevalent at Gen Museveni’s political school at Kyankwanzi?
Ordinarily, the graduates of that NUP Political School at Kamwokya, who by now are supposed to be in thousands, should be the ones going to social media to explain to the ordinary and less privileged foot soldiers that ‘look guys Erias Lukwago is our ally and there is nothing betrayal, hostile or wrong about him starting his own PFF for as long he isn’t launching verbal missiles at the Principal or Kavule.’ That is what the explanation ought to be and whoever demands that of Secretary General Rubongoya and those he leads with at Kavule, wouldn’t be asking for too much.
Otherwise at the Monday press conference for Katonga, Wafula Ogutu appropriately made it clear that PFF or Freedom Party hasn’t come to diminish or compete with NUP in anyway. He made it clear they are here to supplement on what the Principal, NUP and other genuine opposition political formations have been doing. Hence their coming into existence should strictly be bad news only for Gen Museveni, not Bobi Wine and his supporters. The same senior citizen equally made it clear they intend to antagonize Gen Museveni, and no one else, because he is the one with the ball.
Wafula Ogutu, who has been at the center of all previous efforts to build grand opposition coalitions against Gen Museveni since the IPC days in the early 2010s all the way to the TDA idea in the runner up to 2016 campaigns, sounded hopeful and de-escalatory when he said this confusion is only among ordinary supporters (both at Katonga and Kavule) because for them as leaders are already talking about many things on how they can continue working together towards weakening and eventually overcome Gen YK Museveni and his NRM ‘junta,’ as he called it. He wondered why anyone possessed with basic understanding, and who is genuinely anti-junta, can go hurting and fail to sleep at night simply because the registration and unveiling of PFF is nearing completion. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
