Reliable sources have revealed to this news website why Col Kizza Besigye always frequents Grand Imperial Hotel, causing the place to be hated and categorized as “enemy territory” by President Museveni and his security handlers especially Gen Kale Kayihura. In fact Kayihura, just like Museveni, can never honor an invitation to any event once Grand Imperial is the venue.
“He will at best delegate if he must but once he sees that as venue, he won’t even give a financial contribution,” said a source adding that one time KIU students invited him to preside over their dinner at Grand Imperial and instead the IGP offered to pay for them a venue at another city hotel. “It was a very important event he couldn’t afford missing lest Amama Mbabazi weighed in and took the day.
So Gen Kayihura had to be there personally to placate the President’s interest yet he wasn’t comfortable with the venue the KIU students had chosen,” said a source close to the IGP. On the other hand, for Besigye a week hardly passes without him showing up at Grand Imperial. “He is always buying Forex or even converting his dollars or Euros into local currency and has for many years been using the Forex bureaus at Grand Imperial. That has been the case for more than 30 years.
It’s his place and he can’t abandon it just like that,” said an influential assistant to Besigye. It was further revealed that Besigye in the 1990s used to frequent Steven Banya’s coffee shop (Ban Café?) which too used to be situated on the same building and fell in love with Grand Imperial since then. In fact KB’s frequent visits at Grand Imperial partly explain why the owner Karim Hirji came to be falsely accused to have sold his Equatorial Hotel Building to him yet the bitter truth is that the veteran politician from Rwakabengo doesn’t have such money.
