By Mulengera Reporters
Norbert Mao says that the deeply-seated animosity between him and the NUP fraternity was instigated by meal card-minded DP politicians who misled Bobi Wine and created a wedge between them.
Mao says he was the first one to take note of the potential Bobi Wine had to positively influence the politics of Uganda. Mao says that as early as August 2017, he realized the enthusiasm the Ugandan youths had towards Mr. Wine who had just win to become the Kyadondo East MP. And that he saw this as something that had to be harnessed for the betterment of the struggle for a better-governed Uganda.
That (besides writing about it in his Sunday Monitor column) he immediately reached out and told Mr. Wine he should help leverage his appeal and get millions of hitherto disinterested young people out to cast their vote against Gen Museveni.
Mao says he had analyzed figures and realized that Gen Museveni had been beating Dr. Kizza Besigye with a difference of 3-4m at every election. To him, this gap could be closed by Mr. Wine inciting millions of young people who were of voting age but were always indifferent and staying away.
Mao says he realized that this is a role Mr. Wine would effectively play as a mobilizer of those young people to turn up and cast their vote for the leading opposition candidate who was going to be none but himself (Mao) running on the DP ticket. He wanted Mr. Wine to play his rightful role as a special mobilizer of his (like Seya did for Dr. Besigye in 2001) without himself being a candidate for President.
Mao says that he assumed that since his parents had been DP, Mr. Wine would automatically be comfortable in DP since FDC had refused to become excited about recruiting him into its ranks even when he was a self-professed admirer of Dr. KB.
The besieged DP President says that Bobi Wine, who he says will never become President of Uganda through balloting (contrary to what the NUP crowd thinks), was destined to play that role of king maker and being chief mobilizer for someone else as opposed to himself being the candidate against Gen Museveni.
Up to this day, Mao’s view about Mr. Wine’s limitations and inability to effectively challenge Gen Museveni and get majority Ugandans see in him potential for a good President, hasn’t changed. He says Mr. Wine had bought into his script and was about to declare readiness to join DP and assume the role of his chief campaigner against Gen Museveni in 2021 but all this changed when opportunists within his old DP sprung up and poisoned the mind of the colossus from Magere.
He says they began telling Mr. Wine that Mao was a terrible person who couldn’t be trusted. Mao says this is how Mr. Wine, who had all along been subservient to him, changed and began asserting himself as his equal as opposed to being the junior partner.
“We had the DP-UYD reunion meetings which were going very well but when he saw how crowds received him well, he began swelling and this changed his entire view,” said Mao clearly parroting the talking points NUP rebel MP Abed Bwanika has previously been amplifying on CBS radio.
In a bid to discredit Muwanga Kivumbi, the new NUP Deputy President who previously announced readiness to fight rebel MPs inside NUP, Bwanika has been saying that Museveni wouldn’t be President today if the Mao-Wine alliance had worked out in 2021.
He says they were on the verge of convincing Mao to remain Party President for DP as Mr. Wine runs for Presidency on the same party’s ticket but the whole thing blew up when Muwanga Kivumbi curiously drove to Gulu and privately and prematurely leaked to Mao what was still being discussed. That this made Mao to become paranoid towards Bobi Wine and thereby inciting him into extreme anger.
In his speech to the DPs at their DNC in Mbarara, Mao made it clear there is no way Mr. Wine or anyone is going to ever overcome Gen Museveni through elections. He made it clear that the next President of Uganda after Museveni will be determined through negotiations which he said were to be influenced by people like him who are already inside the ruling system.
He implored fellow DPs to tell the difference between the likes of Mr. Wine who are preparing to merely consolidate themselves while occupying the position of leader of opposition and power-minded serious people like himself who are not merely in the position but in a position of power. Mao also made reference to other moments when DP made concessions in order to be able to selflessly build a broader political coalition to make project Uganda succeed.
He referred to 1986 when DP leaders joined Museveni’s NRM in good faith and to 1996 when DP embraced UPC and worked together under IPFC even after years of being persecuted by UPC. He adduced what he called evidence that DP won the 1980 elections only to be rigged out by UPC whose Cecilia Ogwal the same DPs embraced 15 years later in 1996 to deflate Museveni and his NRM.
Mao also claimed that even when he was beaten in Besigye’s home district of Rukungiri as he campaigned there in 1996, Dr. PK Semogerere in 2001 wholly embraced Dr. Besigye and leveraged DP structures in the whole country to campaign for him.
Mao, who castigated PK Semogerere for the 1996 boycott of Parliamentary elections as he protested rigging in the Presidential vote, asserted that the same good faith was what DP under him exhibited in 2011 under IPC, in 2016 under TDA and in 2021 under People Power only to be stabbed in the back by Mr. Wine who maliciously lured and took away many DP leaders including several MPs.
Mao, who controversially will be challenging his Cabinet boss Museveni for the 3rd time in 2026, predicted total disappointment for millions of Mr. Wine’s supporters because the bitter truth is that their man will never become President of Uganda through balloting however much they get excited with so-called protest vote. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
