By Mulengera Reporter
Former Security Minister Lt Gen Henry Tumukunde will stand against former boss and comrade President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni in next year’s presidential election.
On February 28, Tumukunde wrote to the Electoral Commission (EC) communicating his plans to consult Ugandans before finally deciding to get in the presidential ring. The Commission acknowledged receipt of the letter on March 03.
Days ago, government withdrew guards from the former minister, leaving many speculating on what would happen to the embattled former spy chief, and what would be his next move.
Months after Museveni dropped Tumukunde and former Uganda Police Force Chief Gen Kale Kayihura in a two-man reshuffle in 2018, the former Internal Security Organisation (ISO) chief announced he would contest to become Kampala City mayor.
But Tumukunde changed his mind after making consultations. And now, another set of consultations across the country will determine if he finally decides to compete for Uganda’s top position – a seat he has been close to as minister and head of ISO, meeting Museveni severally.
In September 2015, Museveni promoted Tumukunde from Brigadier to Lieutenant General, the second highest rank in the army, and retired him from the national army.
By the time of his retirement, Tumukunde was campaigning for President Museveni ahead of the 2016 general elections.
Tumukunde, who previously served as UPDF Representative in Parliament, Commander of the 4th Division in Gulu and head of the army’s Personnel and Administration Department, is not new to controversy.
In 2005, he was detained for flouting standing orders barring serving UPDF officers from politics after he made political statements during a talk show to the effect that the Museveni government had veered off the ideals it stood for during the five-year bush war that propelled the National Resistance Army to power in 1986.
Just like former army commander Maj Gen Mugisha Muntu (now head of the Alliance for National Transformation-ANT, an opposition political party) and Col Jet Mwebaze, Tumukunde joined Museveni in the bush war after completing his studies at Makerere University.
After a trial that dragged on for eight years, the General Court Martial convicted Tumukunde for flouting the UPDF code of conduct but cleared him on charges of spreading harmful propaganda.
The former UPDF officer is now seeking the presidency to offer Ugandans a fundamental change he accuses Museveni, his former boss, of failing to deliver; and a peaceful transition that citizens of the landlocked East African country have never seen since independence in 1962.
“I join other well-meaning Ugandans to support the fundamental change which we promised Ugandans in the past and a peaceful transition from one generation to another,” Tumukunde wrote to the EC, in a veiled reference to Museveni’s inaugural speech at Parliament, and his 34-year stay in power.
Meanwhile, Tumukunde is uncertain “other organs of the state” will respect the EC’s clearance of his consultative meetings.
In recent weeks, Police has blocked consultations by presidential hopeful Robert Kyagulanyi.
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