By Mulengera Reporters
NUP NEC and founder member David Musiri has corroborated online media reports to the effect that Secretary General David Lewis Rubongoya is indeed having his eyes at grabbing the NUP Presidency and take effective control of the party in the next few years.
Earlier online reports indicated that Rubogonya is using this electioneering season, especially on Parliamentary races, to position his own allies who will be at hand to aid and enable his ambition to become the new NUP President when the incumbent and founding party President Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu Bobi Wine becomes ineligible in around 2030.
Musiri, a close ally of Kyagulanyi, says the principal he knows is principled enough and won’t be tinkering with the NUP Constitution in order to serve and remain party President beyond the two terms (maximum of 10 years) as is stipulated in the supreme laws of the party.
He confirms that it’s a well-known secret among insiders at Kavule that Rubongoya, a politically very ambitious character, wants to become the second NUP President and he is already working hard to actualize his wish when time comes.
In a viral video, Musiri claims that Rubongoya is a manipulator currently using his position as Secretary General to destroy strong party members whose political prominence he fears might complicate his plans. That he thinks formidable political figures like himself might stand in his way to become NUP President after Kyagulanyi.
Musiri, a former radical student leader at Makerere and a NEC member who has been coordinating the party’s repeated wins at most of Uganda’s Universities, had asked to carry the NUP flag for the position of Makindye West MP. However, even when he believes he was the most qualified, his bid was thwarted by the Party’s Election Management Committee (EMC) which chose outgoing KCCA Speaker Zahara Luyirika.
Zahara Luyirika’s getting the card has widely been protested as controversial because she had been battling for the position of Kampala Woman MP against Shamim Malende who ended up getting the ticket at the last minute after a Kibuli-based Muslim cleric reached out to Kyagulanyi and ordered him to allow her go for the second term.
Zahara Luyirika was pushed to Makindye West, which she currently represents as KCCA Lord Councillor, even when she had all along been campaigning for Woman MP Kampala. This negatively impacted Musiri, the incumbent Allan Sewanyana and Kampala land dealer Faruk Ntege. The trio had been battling for the NUP flag and all of them have justifiably rejected the process through which Luyirika ended up being imposed, at their own expense.
Allan Sewanyana, who says Zahara is too scandalous and money-minded to be entrusted with Makindye, has already announced he won’t bow out. He says he will seek re-election even without the NUP ticket. Faruk Ntege has similar intentions.
Musiri too says it’s his right to stand under the Constitution of Uganda and isn’t going to tolerate persecution by Rubongoya’s henchmen anymore. Musiri, a veteran of political activism, says that in 2021 he was sat down by the very Rubongoya in a meeting of three people during which he was cajoled to bow out for Ssewanyana.
“I was surprised when people from the NUP Secretariat originated a rumour aimed at destroying me among my people of Makindye, to the effect that I had been given the ticket only to sell it to Allan Sewanyana, which was totally untrue. That was clear persecution aimed at character-assassinating me and I was hurt. That is reminiscent of the politics of intrigue and sabotage as was taught to us in DP.”
Musiri says he has been targeted for demonization because he is among those who Secretary General fears will stand in his way to becoming LoP and eventually leverage the post-Kyagulanyi transition to become the new party President in 2030.
“That is why he is interested in low-grade politicians to be in Parliament as of that time. It’s a broader conspiracy to even demystify Makindye in the politics of Kampala yet it has always produced outstanding political leaders for the opposition [since the days of Nsubuga Nsambu, Hussein Kyanjo etc]. They want all the remaining credible institutions destroyed and that’s why people like myself are being targeted. We are called People Power and that’s why I’m now taking my issues to the People’s Court to decide my fate. I can’t accept their dictatorship anymore. There is dictatorship because that EMC can’t make any autonomous decisions. I knew it all but I gave a benefit of doubt in order to properly expose these people.”
He says he fully knows about the plans by his tormentors inside NUP headquarters at Kavule to demonize and destroy those who protest their injustices and stand as independents by branding them state agents, moles and proxies working for Gen Museveni and his ruling apparatus.
“I have been reasonable and patient and given them enough time and now is my time to stand as an independent because power belongs to the people. I have not broken any law because the Constitution of Uganda gives me that right,” says Musiri while vowing to go down fighting as opposed to surrendering to the whims of his party’s all-powerful Secretary General David Lewis Rubongoya. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
