‘Mao, Ogwal, Lukyamuzi potential Movt converts’
By Alex B. Atuhaire, Oketch Bitek, & Moses Odokonyero
Aug 23, 2004

GULU- President Museveni has named MPs Mr Nobert Mao, Mr Reagan Okumu, Ms Cecilia Ogwal and Mr Ken Lukyamuzi potential converts to the Movement.

The President who flew to Gulu in the afternoon to address big political rallies said he could not kill the trio, renown to be leading critics of his rule because the Movement has the capacity to woo them.

Museveni warned leaders who want to gain power through the gun and advised all people who want to be leaders to wait for elections and contest instead of looking at violence as an option.

“Mao, Okumu and Ogwal are potential Movement converts. In the Movement we can never compromise with killers, if you are a killer, we must use all means to suppress you,” he said. The president said the 1995 Constitution solved the question of political power.

“After the 1995 Constitution which was made by delegates which you people elected, there is no need for use of violence in politics. It is now a war of words - speaking in a nice way,” the President told a rally in Bungatira sub-county in Aswa.

“These people who have been having guns have been making a very big mistake. To kill people who don’t agree with you is a very big mistake,” he said.
“I have been in power for 18 years and I have a lot of power - guns, so if I was to use it to kill, I would have finished people,” he said.

“I would have killed Okumu, Mao, Cecilia Ogwal and Ken Lukyamuzi and people would have run away from Uganda because I would be using wrong means,” he said.

Okumu and Mao, in whose constituencies the president addressed the rallies, were visibly absent. The president recently said he hated the named MPs because they also hate him. Their absence could only confirm the seriousness of their love-hate relationship with the president.

The president virtually announced the insurgency, which has rocked northern Uganda for the last 17 years, was over and said government was to embark on a ‘big rehabilitation of the Acholi’.

He said he was ready to forgive LRA leader Joseph Kony and his deputy Vincent Otti.


© 2004 The Monitor Publications


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