By Mulengera Reporters
In his 9th May petition to the Electoral Commission, DP Deputy Legal Advisor Richard Kizito Lumu implores the EC Chairman Justice Simon Byabakama to use his powers under the Constitution and also under the Political Parties & Organizations Act to rein in his Party President Norbert Mao and Secretary General Gerald Blacks Siranda.
Lumu explains that the proposed changes to the DP Constitution that were submitted by Siranda and recently gazetted by the EC on 25th April 2025 (under Notice No. 1143 of 2025) were fraudulent, unconstitutional and injurious to the values of DP. That the same doesn’t reflect the will of DP delegates as was expressed during the September 2020 National Delegates Conference in Gulu.
Lumu says he personally proposed several amendments to the party Constitution, none of which was approved and adopted even when a rigorous debate ensued over them during the Gulu NDC (in the end no binding resolutions were made on all these proposed reforms). He accuses Siranda of acting unilaterally by presenting a distorted version of his original proposals and going ahead to present the same to the EC purporting it to be the party position whereas not.
Richard Lumu, who is also the MP for Mityana South on the DP ticket, says that the making of changes to the party Constitution is the business of the NDC but in this case, not even NEC has been consulted by the SG. Accusing Siranda of acting in bad faith to serve his own individual ‘narrow interests,’ Lumu enumerates these to include efforts to do away with the existence of UYD and Women League in the DP Constitution.
Lumu contends that this is contrary to the delegates’ resolution at the Gulu NDC of September 2020. He says delegates overwhelmingly voted for the mainstreaming of UYD to become the Youth League of DP. He says the two leagues are very important to keep the youth and women groups formally engaged into DP party processes and decision making.
In the petition that the EC Chairman received and read on 12th May, Lumu wonders why Siranda is paranoid and uncomfortable having the vibrant youth league and that of Women in DP. He also accuses the SG of trying to violate the DP members’ rights enshrined under Articles 28 and 44 of the Constitution.
The proposed amendments require that for any DP member to challenge any party decision in Court, they have demonstrably to first exhaust internal dispute resolution mechanisms inside the DP. Lumu, himself a lawyer, says this violates clear Constitutional provisions which entitle every DP member to a right to be heard and to also access justice in the Courts of law.
Lumu also accuses Siranda of using his unilaterally-proposed amendments to strengthen the office of SG to the extent that the Secretary General should also become the Chief Administrative and Accounting Officer for the party yet this is supposed to be the work of the Treasurer who must also have the last word on all the party’s financial resources and other assets. That such centralization of too much powers in the hands of the SG is synonymous with dictatorship which the DP Constitution abhors.
Lumu demands that the EC Chairman, who ordinarily is supposed to be supervised by Mao as Justice & Constitutional Affairs Minister, bases on all these breaches to crack the whip on SG Siranda before it gets too late. He wants the EC to disregard the gazetted Constitutional amendments proposals and dismiss the same as invalid.
Siranda is also accused of totally sidelining the NEC and going ahead to personally come up with his own internal election guidelines including imposing prohibitively very high nomination charges which Lumu says are meant to financially burden poorer party members while preventing them from effectively competing with financially more established incumbents who they might wish to dislodge at the 30th May NDC in Mbarara.
The SG Siranda is also being accused of smuggling in a proposal to strengthen the hand of the Management Committee in the running of the party’s administrative affairs. Lumu says the power to make administrative and management decisions between one NDC and another is vested in NEC which he says Siranda and Mao have been alienating in favor of the Management Committee which he says has only 4 members, unlike NEC which has a larger number of leaders.
He says that this giving of too much powers to the Management Committee was exhaustively debated during the Gulu NDC and the delegates rejected the proposal. He wants Byabakama to task Siranda to explain who or which organs of the party he exactly consulted before coming up with those proposed amendments to the party’s Constitution.
He demands that Byabakama finds Siranda culpable and severely sanctions him for subverting the DP Constitution. He demands that even other parties, and not just DP, should get their leaders severely sanctioned for stifling internal democracy in their parties contrary to clear provisions of the Political Parties & Organizations Act. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
