By Mulengera Reporters
During his Saturday afternoon rally for Buikwe district, President Museveni opted to speak in English because his audience had people from diverse linguistic backgrounds.
He signaled Minister Diana Mutasingwa who is also the area Woman MP, to step forward and translate for Luganda speakers who clearly were the majority at the rally.
However, Mutasingwa turned out to be more inept in her translation skills than the President must have expected.
The big man from Rwakitura at some point asked her to let him do his thing and he ended up speaking and translating his own speech at the same time.
He then called her back and she resumed the translation perhaps after realizing a lot of time was being expended. She carried on with extreme difficulty as the President kept correcting her every now and then. Sometimes, Mutasingwa, who seemed emotionally exhausted perhaps because of too much campaigning, would find herself inadvertently just repeating the very English words the way the President had stated them, as if to repeat after him.
Upon resuming the translation job, towards the end of the big man’s campaign speech, Mutasingwa once again flopped doing a good job.
Some of the words that disturbed her a lot to translate included minimum wage (omusala ogutandikirwako) which investors could be required to pay their employees and interest rate at which banks lend (amagoba agasulibwa ku sente enewoole) among others.
Realizing his message wasn’t coming out the way he intended it, a clearly disgusted Museveni verbally signaled NRM Deputy Secretary General Rose Namayanja to come and save the day. “Namayanja please, come and rescue this young girl,” a seemingly resigned Museveni said.
He had earlier on kept imploring Mutasingwa with “please put it in some good Luganda” but all in vain. Indeed Namayanja, a more experienced politician and more eloquent Luganda speaker, did a much better job as opposed to Diana Mutasingwa, who kept asking “Mzee repeat that one for me.”
Ordinarily, being given chance to translate the President’s speech is an opportunity to shine and show relevancy before your people and in most cases, its a privilege rally organizers leave for the area MP or any other elected NRM official to handle so that they get out some political capital.
In the Buikwe case, area Woman MP Diana Mutasingwa (the only NRM flag bearer who survived the Kyagulanyi wave of 2021) didn’t seem prepared for the opportunity she was given. Yet she isn’t the first one to goof and lose face while translating the President’s speech in this campaign season.
Earlier on there was Bugiri Woman MP flag bearer Eunice Namatende who was found wanting and then ex-Rural Electrification Authority (REA) manager Godfrey Werihke who failed to shine during the Mbale rally where he controversially got himself the slot to serve as the President’s translator during the NRM candidate’s rally there, during the month of November.
Museveni, who has been very time conscious throughout this campaign season, was disgusted and wondered how Werihke, who isn’t an elected leader under the NRM hierarchy, ended up being his translator. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
