By Mulengera Reporters
Unable to miss out on the Shs45bn political parties in parliament will be equally sharing as the country counts down to 2026 elections, the Kavule-based National Unity Platform has finally agreed to become fully engaged in IPOD activities.
The Robert Kyagulanyi-led party, which risked missing out on billions, officially says the current IPOD is different from the one they have been boycotting since 2021 because this one is created under an Act of Parliament, unlike the previous one which was more less an NGO. Ironically, the same party directed its MPs to walk out and castigated MP Faith Nakut who moved the amendments which resulted into IPOD ceasing to be a mere NGO and becoming a creature of the law.
Perhaps convinced that Ugandans have a low attention span and have now forgotten, party spokesman Joel Ssenyonyi now says that this legal provisioning for the IPOD arrangement is all that was keeping them away and they are now ready to come on board since that anomaly has since been fixed.
That NUP has never had any problem engaging in dialogue with other parties to chat a way forward for Uganda’s future. Like Abed Bwanika used to say and got castigated by foot soldiers on social media, the Kavule-based party now says IPOD is a good platform that can be leveraged to meaningfully talk about the freedom of so-called political prisoners who are listed to include Eddie Mutwe Edward Sebuwufu, Achileo Kivumbi, Mugumya Gaddafi, Grace Wakabi and Bobi Yanga aka Anthony Twinomujuni just to mention a few.
The party also sees joining IPOD as an opportunity to enrich discussions and decisions made at the meetings of National Consultative Forum (NCF) which has even parties that aren’t represented in Parliament. In fact, their Benjamin Katana currently is deputy chairman for NCF.
The party, which isn’t ruling out the possibility of Kyagulanyi attending IPOD Summit meetings and inevitably getting photographed with YK Museveni, now says that it’s delegation members will be demanding that IPOD becomes serious as the forum for dialogue so that political parties are allowed to freely hold their rallies as is provided for under the Constitution and other laws of Uganda.
This massive U-turn that has been made without Gen Museveni first having to give any concessions, is going to create contradictions and serious PR problems for the NUP party whose critics are rightly going to be out arguing that they have finally cracked and agreed to come to the eating table (the NRM boss chairs IPOD too) simply because of fear to lose out on the Shs45bn which political parties in Parliament are going to be equally sharing between now and election time, provided they enroll for IPOD membership and proceed to become active members. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
