By Mulengera Reporters
Recently a row erupted among the NUP leaders in Busoga following the leaked audios which many interpreted to imply that Jinja City Woman MP Manjeri Kyebakutika and Bukooli Central MP Solomon Silwanyi (of NRM) were an item and romantically linked. Instead of owning up the mess, Manjeri’s loyalists resorted to looking for people to blame.
First casualty was Jamal Mukuve, a leading NUP youth leader from Bugiri where Silwanyi comes from too. It was claimed that Mukuve was a mole who Silwanyi had used (as a pimp) to sweep Manjeri off her feet with an intention of messing her up politically and by extension undermine NUP because she is their sole MP from Busoga. Things have been boiling up since that time until this week when the Manjeri camp reached out to Kamwokya imploring the Secretariat to get involved to de-escalate things.
That’s how a meeting was convened on Thursday at Kamwokya where Manjeri also attended. She made the case that Mukuve was merely a proxy of Pastor Andrew Muwanguzi, the NUP giant from Jinja. The controversial preacher from Jinja also heads the ideology program in the party. During the meeting, a tearful Manjeri told party officials that Muwanguzi had been working for her downfall for a while. She explained how the financially struggling Pastor has a lot of debts and one of his creditors one time deployed Kanyamas who grabbed him as he exited Kamwokya.
The guys wanted Shs11m in total which Manjeri paid on the understanding that Muwanguzi would repay it to her. This loan related to a car Muwanguzi had previously taken possession of. That when Muwanguzi failed to pay back, he joined those fighting Manjeri.
The Thursday meeting was used to receive more allegations (including marital-related ones) against Muwanguzi who was in the meeting himself but wasn’t successful in pushing back against Manjeri because majority top officials in the meeting seemed to have long gotten convinced that he is naturally a difficult character synonymous with a lot of intrigue.
In the end, it was agreed that much as Muwanguzi is an effective mobilizer, his continued holding of the national level position in NUP must be subjected to some comprehensive review because much of the intrigue threatening to obliterate the party in Busoga seems to be linked to him. Sources say that what was meant to be a harmonization meeting ended up deepening the wedge between the Manjeri group and those against her.(For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [whatsapp line], 0779411734 & 0200900416 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).