Call for transitional government as NRM infighting escalates A - TopicsExpress



          

Call for transitional government as NRM infighting escalates A call has been made for a transitional government to be established in Uganda led by a presidential commission. It comes during a time when the current Ugandan leadership under President Yoweri Museveni is facing internal misunderstandings that have led to the sacking of the once powerful Prime Minister, Amama Mbabazi and attempts by the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) to remove him as its Secretary General. Social media reports recently reported that Mr Mbabazi who was unceremoniously sacked after he made it known he was going to stand against Museveni in the 2016 general election was publicly humiliated at a recent meeting of the NRM’s Central Executive Committee (CEC) in which prominent figures like Brig Matayo Kyaligonza publicly hurled abuse at him. Held at State House Nakasero and presided over by its Chairman, Gen Museveni, the NRM’s CEC saw prominent party leaders like Capt Mike Mukula, Jim Muhwezi being encouraged by President Museveni to humiliate Mbabazi, accusing him of committing ‘crimes’ against the party. New Prime Minister Ruhakana Rugunda is said to have suggested that his predecessor be hauled before the party’s disciplinary committee to answer charges of bring the party into disrepute by declaring his intentions to stand against Museveni while it had been agreed by the party that there would be no one to contest the presidency apart from the incumbent. According to social media reports circulating in Kampala, Mr Mbabazi remained calm throughout this ordeal, asking to be told what crimes he was being accused of. In the heat of exchanges of bitter words against each other CEC member Kyaligonza is said to have been restrained from having a fist fight with Kampala businessman and Museveni’s business confidant Basajjabalaba. In the end, Capt Mukula allegedly recommended that Mbabazi be sacked as the NRM’s Secretary General. While it is not yet clear whether this was the decision reached by the CEC, it is now understood that Mr Mbabazi has been forced to go on an indefinite leave as Secretary General as the party looks to appoint his replacement. Writing in his column in The London Evening Post, Prof Eric Kashambuzi said the crisis in the NRM had forced Museveni to quietly get rid of those that were posing a threat to his leadership. He writes that these include Sam Kutesa, the country’s longtime Foreign Minister who, in addition to his duties as the Foreign Minister, is currently President of the United Nations in New York. Others, he added, are the former army chief Gen Aronda Nyakairima who has been moved aside and placed as the country’s Internal Affairs Minister and Gen David Sejusa who fled the country early last year and now lives in London. Kashambuzi charged that several solutions have been put forward by various Ugandan political groups to try and bring the country together. These include those wanting a military solution that would forcibly remove Museveni from power, those that are aspiring for ‘a significant’ reduction of central government power, those that believe the solution lay in secession from the country, those that want the opposition to unite for the sole purpose of overthrowing Museveni and then find time to settle their differences once they got into power. “The group that I belong to is of the view that the ‘winner takes all’ is not a wise solution,” Prof Kashambuzi said. He went on to explain that all Ugandans, apart from those that have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity, should form a transitional government under a presidential commission with a representative from each of Uganda’s regions. The new government elected in this form would then organise a comprehensive population census to determine how many Ugandans are there, identify development needs and hold a national convention to debate and decide how Ugandans want to be governed. Museveni has been president of the country since 1986 after leading a bush war against the former regime of Dr Milton Obote. While he at first criticised those African leaders that were reluctant to give up power, he has since gone out of his way to ensure that he remains president and has been accused of using the army to keep himself and his closest members of his family in power. Once a darling of the West, President Museveni’s standing on the world scene has suffered irreparably since he changed his country’s constitution to make it possible for him to stay in power forever. But calls for a transitional government in Uganda may fall on already deaf ears. Sources close to the Museveni regime are starting to whisper that it may be too late for anyone in the next 10 years to change the status quo in Uganda. The sources who spoke to us on condition they were not named said President Museveni has already finalised arrangements for the handover of power to, you guessed it, his son Brig Muhoozi Kainerugaba. While the young army officer is officially the commander of the Presidential Protection Guard, unofficially he commands more authority than Gen Katumba Wamala, the Chief of Defence Forces of the Uganda Peoples Defence Forces (UPDF). The sources further reveal that while many of the old NRM guard were busy making money and becoming filthy rich, President Museveni has been quietly strengthening his hold onto power by slowly but surely getting rid of those who do not agree with his plan to have his son succeed him. As a result of this, many vital command structures in the UPDF, the government, the judiciary, the police force and the prison services are safely in the hands of young men who are ready to die for Museveni. As our Kampala columnist Jessica Badebye reports in this week’s Letter From Kampala, President Museveni has finally managed to get rid of his major stumbling block to his plans; his former Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi who he has tricked into writing his own letter of ‘dismissal’ as NRM’s Secretary General. President Museveni has finally managed to get rid of his major stumbling block to his plans; his former Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi who he has tricked into writing his own letter of ‘dismissal’ as NRM’s Secretary General. With the fleeing into exile of another heavyweight last year, Gen David Sejusa and the demotion of the former CDF Gen Aronda Nyakairima to Minister of Internal Affairs, Museveni has once again proved to be the master planner the world has come to quietly accept and reluctantly appreciate. Our regular readers may want to refer to Gen Sejusa’s Analysis Report of June to July 2014 where he spoke of ‘cracks starting to appear’ within the Museveni regime. Our reliable sources are now telling us that indeed those cracks were deliberately shown to the world while the master planner was busy putting into place the final bits of his jigsaw. Nepotism and patronage, as Gen Sejusa warned in his earlier analysis report, have been widely used by Gen Museveni to the extent that today nearly everyone in a position of power in Uganda has in one way or the other, a relationship with the Ugandan leader. The Uganda leader has ruthlessly used state finances to ‘lubricate’ those he wants to serve his interests, our sources say. As a result of this, the 2016 elections are seen by many as a foregone conclusion. thelondoneveningpost/call-for-transitional-government-as-nrm-infighting-escalates/
Posted on: Sun, 26 Oct 2014 14:54:44 +0000

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