By Mulengera Reporters
Even after getting back the NUP ticket, Kampala Woman MP Shamim Malende has largely remained disoriented, unpopular and unwanted inside NUP, especially among the top echelons of the party. She is popular among the ordinary adherents of NUP, but not so among the party officials who dislike her largely because of paranoia, elusiveness and complicated character.
She is elusive and she is also one leader whose phone number changes every week on average. This makes it hard for anyone to effectively do political business with her. 8 in every 10 NUP top officials are resentful about her unreliability when it comes to being accessible via phone, yet she rarely comes to party headquarters. Neither does she regularly attend or organize any party activities in her Kampala constituency. That lukewarmness has made her to be one of the most undependable leaders inside NUP.
“She will give you her new phone number today and within the next 10 days she has discarded it and acquired another one. If you are lucky to find it on, she still won’t pick. She doesn’t come for meetings and even when she attends, she will talk a lot and ask to be allocated responsibility, which she will never deliver on. You will reach the day for the event when her part is not delivered and she is nowhere to be seen and her phone will be off. She won’t communicate her absence and these are things which supporters don’t understand. They simply fall for her media antics of appearing in the camera claiming to be the lawyer for political prisoners,” says a top NUP official.
Even members of NUP legal team who do the real donkey work on those cases are privately uncomfortable with Malende squeezing herself on them when addressing reporters outside Court in order to appear in media videos. Sometimes, she will stay behind to divert reporters and address them afresh after the seniors have left and her story ends up being the one aired on TV news, to the total exclusion of the senior lawyers who do the real legal work to defend the so-called political prisoners. This privately is angering many party lawyers.
THE NAKAWA DEBACLE: Because the NUP party is financially struggling, after Gen Museveni closed the IPOD taps, Kavule decreed that in areas like Kampala, where the party is very strong, flag bearers of a given constituency be the ones to fund the principal’s political tour on the day he campaigns in that area.
Nakawa Division was covered a few days ago and it was decided that one rally had to be in Nakawa East and another in Joel Ssenyonyi’s West. In candidate Alex Waiswa Mufumbiro’s absence, his Nakawa East had to be covered mainly by the outgoing MP Ronald Balimwezo, assisted by Joel Ssenyonyi.
Because she is the Kampala Woman MP Candidate, Malende covers all the five City Divisions and the 9 MP Constituencies. She was approached to contribute money for Nakawa East and she didn’t. Kavule inside sources say that Malende, who has never forgiven decision-makers at Kavule for trying to sacrifice her in favour of Zahara Luyirika, merely disregarded the arrangement and never contributed anything.
This condemned Balimwezo and Ssenyonyi to having to dig deeper into their pockets as the Councilor level candidates/flag bearers don’t have that much financial means to contribute. Whereas Ssenyonyi played it cool, Balimwezo was hurt and wasn’t prepared to pretend about this.
He demonstrated his resentment right there at the venue firstly by standing up and chasing away the pro-Malende foot soldiers who came to the venue a few minutes to Kyagulanyi’s arrival and insisted to paint the whole of it with her campaign posters. The young men tried to use force but were overwhelmed on realizing how determined Balimwezo is. The original plan was to prevent Malende from coming to the campaign stage but Bobi Wine prevailed when he personally pleaded with Balimwezo and other local organizers to let her in. Mr. Wine’s concern was that fist-fighting at the rally would create bad publicity for the NUP brand. He implored Balimwezo to just ignore.
Malende, who is causing a lot of discomfort to the internal top party NUP leadership exactly the way her mentor Nabilah Nagayi used to do to the FDC party bosses (2006-2021), also made her already bad case worse by even coming late for the Nakawa East rally long after the Presidential Candidate Robert Kyagulanyi had arrived. She explained herself by claiming that her day had started in Court where she was delayed by the Judge.
Not done, Balimwezo registered his contempt for her when he refused to reciprocate when she took to the microphone and offered to be the one to invite him to come and make his campaign speech in his capacity as the Lord Mayoral Candidate carrying the NUP flag. The animosity between them was very clear to especially those who knew the internal quarrels her lukewarm attitude caused. Someone else had to invite Balimwezo.
In his speech, Kyagulanyi later on tried to mend fences and de-escalate the situation by calling out “vimba Balimwezo vimba, vimba Shamim Malende vimba.” This was meant to calm down the tempers and uneasiness between these two NUP candidates who share exactly the same constituency and therefore have to campaign in the entire Kampala. They both responded by running and jumping around the campaigning podium towards where Kyagulanyi was but in her case, Shamim Malende’s body language depicted someone who was offended and stiff because of the perceived mistreatment by the pro-Balimwezo organizers who resisted her posters being conspicuously displayed at the rally venue.
In fact, the Nakawa East events have since escalated fears at Kavule that deep down her heart, Malende must be praying hard that Erias Lukwago, her fellow Muslim, defeats Balimwezo. And it’s not hard to understand this. Balimwezo was among those who (for the Kampala Woman MP flag bearer) openly and initially fraternized with Zahara Luyirika who almost sent Malende to the political Taiwan. Those who know well her say that Malende is a very vindictive thin-skinned politician who doesn’t easily move on.
She has never come to terms as to why all of a sudden most of the NUP top bosses had turned against her and were favoring Luyirika. To her, this amounted to betrayal and being stabbed in the back. She believes she was only saved by the ordinary party supporters who used every opportunity they got, including Kyagulanyi’s inaugural rally at Natete, to demonstrate how deeply they preferred her over Zahara Luyirika, the outgoing KCCA Speaker. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
