By Mulengera Reporters
During the Monday Cabinet session, a few ministers found it prudent to demonstrate solidarity with NRM Secretary General Justine Kasule Lumumba who has lately been at war with officials manning Museveni’s Office of NRM National Chairman (ONC) based in Kyambogo.
Its headed by Museveni’s Political Assistant Milly Doka Babalanda who says her teams have covered more than 80% of the country establishing structures comprising of Wealth Creation Ambassadors whose work is to volunteer going to radios and other public foras to explain the President’s message on wealth creation and justifying interventions like the creation of the Afande Edith Nakalema anti-corruption unit in State House. Faruk Kirunda, who speaks for the ONC, says they have created structures of 3 members in at least 65,200 villages across Uganda and its only Kampala remaining.
These are two youth leaders-a male and female-as well as one elder with deep understanding of the NRM ideology. One has to be neutral and not involved in any warring factions common in NRM at almost every level. That actually is how Toro media coordinator Nesty Larry, who is already actively campaigning to oust Adolf Mwesige in Bunyangabu, had to be removed and replaced with William Katsigazi to achieve the desired neutrality.
The exercise, on which the Party or the President hasn’t spent any money so far, is in fulfillment of a special assignment Museveni gave to Babalanda during the CEC strategic retreat that took place at Chobe Safari Lodge from 15th to 20th February 2019. As an act of courtesy, Museveni (who is mandated to make such interventions under Chapter 4 of the NRM constitution) introduced Babalanda to the CEC meeting and told them the ONC Kyambogo office she heads was pivotal to his personal interventions as chairman to compliment on what is being done by formal structures of the party.
There are seven strategic reasons that were adopted at Chobe and the creation of these OWC structures (of 3 people per village) wasn’t among them because it wasn’t meant to be. Its Museveni’s thing as national chairman and he clarified as much during the Chobe retreat.
But claiming this amounted to usurping power of party structures, Lumumba (having come under pressure from party chairpersons) over the weekend outed a statement urging party members to be cautious because the Babalanda structures hadn’t been sanctioned anywhere by the party. The statement caused some party members to praise her for the courage as this amounted to indirectly taking on the party chairman but some bashed her saying the ONC had never prevented her from initiating her own activities as SG.
It’s this weekend statement that some Ministers stood in solidarity with during the Monday cabinet meeting. They questioned Museveni as to why his Political Assistant Babalanda was usurping powers of the secretariat and CEC by creating her own structures disguised as Wealth Creation Ambassadors.
M7 HITS THE ROOF
Multiple cabinet have told Mulengera News that at least four ministers spoke their mind vehemently backing Lumumba’s right not to be undermined by staff manning the ONC. These included Jennifer Namuyanju, Julius Maganda (EAC Affairs) and Easter Mbayo. Lumumba, who sits in Cabinet as ex-officio to enable her ensure cabinet decisions are aligned to NRM manifesto promises, was there too and spoke earlier before the trio corroborated her concerns. Sources say Museveni was very furious in his response wondering why plain things he clearly explained during the Chobe retreat had continued to unsettle the officials at Kyaddondo.
The trio had queried the criterion being used to determine the three cadres comprising the wealth creation structures per village. “Leave my program please and find other things to do,” Museveni was quoted as telling off critics after making a long explanation defending the activities of his Kyambogo office.
As most of the ministers pensively looked on, Museveni angrily explained that the establishment of the wealth creation ambassadors is something he had started on much earlier when Molly Kamukama (now PPS) still occupied the ONC office but didn’t make much progress because Kamukama got busy with many other things and didn’t concentrate on this particular assignment.
Sources say clearly disturbed regarding where the trio got the guts to question his works as NRM National Chairman, Museveni at some point stormed out of the meeting and only returned later after easing up a bit. This indicated to the entire cabinet how determined he was to get his way through the Kyambogo office.
It was after that very disappointing Monday cabinet session that a decision was taken that CEC members retreat for a meeting with the Secretariat bosses to chat a way forward on how to counter the Kyambogo office activities. This resulted into the strongly worded dossier of two pages that was released on Tuesday denouncing the same wealth creation activity by the Kyambogo office. (For comments, email us at mulengera2040@gmail.com).
