Matek, just a hiccup, huh ?
..........
UPC plot to expel Obote
BY ALFRED WASIKE
JUST a week after the Zambia-based Uganda People’s Congress leader, Milton Obote shook up his party dissolving its top organ, the Presidential Policy Commission, a group of those sacked are plotting to oust him soon.
Investigations by Sunday Vision have found that a group of angry UPC leaders are secretly meeting in a Kampala suburb and are drawing up strategies to throw out Obote in a delegates’ conference or even earlier.
They claim that Obote is worse than Museveni and does not take advice.
According to a source, the rebel faction, which has so far held three meetings
says the party chief overreacts whenever challenged.
Efforts to get a comment from the new de facto leader in Uganda Haji Badru Wegulo, the chairperson of the new UPC Constitutional Steering Committee, were fruitless, as he switched off his mobile phone.
“It is a big of group of people who are very unhappy with the way they were sacked. They are secretly convincing delegates to join them in throwing out Obote during the delegates’ conference that will take place in a few months. It is a big group from the former PPC, National Organisation Committee, MPs and other organs,” the sources said.
Sunday Vision has learnt that among the plotters are former PPC chairperson, James Rwanyarare, Henry Mayega, Patrick Mwondha, Omara Atubo, Ben Wacha, Cecilia Ogwal, Afunadula, Patrick Kirunda, Yona Kanyomozi, Patrick Rubaihayo and Okullu Epak.
The plotters have also drawn up a memorandum of their grievances, which was e-mailed to Obote yesterday morning. It read, “We are outlining our issues with his leadership of the party. We are protesting the manner in which he sacked us and appointed Movement spies into the party. We are also angry that after toiling in the countryside looking for signatures, even in hostile territory like Buganda, we never even looked at the registration certificate.”
The group is unhappy with Obote’s choice of Kampala lawyer Peter Walubiri as the party’s secretary general. They feel party faithfuls have been sidelined.
Sources said the plotters are against the idea of Obote returning home before the 2006 elections, because most Ugandans are still angry with him over the excesses of the UPC in the 1960s and 1980s.
They argue that his return would jeopardise the chances of UPC and the opposition coalition in the 2006 polls.
Sources dismissed rumours that the plotters were fronting Rwanyarare to replace Obote.
“They want to give the leadership to a younger person like Mayiga, or someone as young, especially to sell the party in Buganda,” the sources said.
Ends
Published on: Sunday, 10th April, 2005
======
Re: [Ugnet] UPC bickering over certificate ! Matek Opoko Sun, 03 Apr 2005 07:29:56 -0700
Nnyambo Jonah Kasangwawo! Tofayo!
THESE ARE JUST HICCUPS. Believe me UPC leadership remains solid focus and determine to >once again bring Uhuru to the people of Uganda after 20 years of NRM oppression in our country. >Have a good sunday.
Matek
From: "jonah kasangwawo" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: ugandanet@kym.net To: ugandanet@kym.net Subject: [Ugnet] UPC bickering over certificate ! Date: Sun, 03 Apr 2005 12:40:45 +0000
Matek,
what's going on ? Is UPC heading for a Ssemogerere-Ssebaggala-type squabble ?
.....................
From Sunday Monitor
Inside story of UPC shake-up
By Frank Nyakairu
KAMPALA — Uganda Peoples Congress President Milton Obote dismissed Dr James Rwanyarare as UPC leader in Uganda for allegedly saying he would defy the exiled party chief.
Rwanyarare was removed as chairman of the Presidential Policy Commission (PPC), the organ that has been running the party, and made chairman of a five-member advisory team.
Dr James Rwanyarare and Congress President Milton Obote
He denies that he wanted to shunt the exiled Obote aside and pave the way for himself to become UPC president.
Obote, exiled in Lusaka since 1985, replaced the PPC with the Constitutional Steering Committee led by national party chairman Badru Wegulo.
Rwanyarare is said to have called a PPC meeting on March 21, which also involved members of the youth wing. He reportedly told the meeting "that he and Cecilia Ogwal were going to get the party registration certificate and run the affairs of the party and be able to defy Obote", said Mr Peter Walubiri, a member of the PPC who, however, did not attend the meeting.
When Obote was told of the meeting, he instructed Walubiri to quickly "collect the certificate and keep" it away from Rwanyarare.
"That's a fabrication," said Rwanyarare. I held that meeting to resolve the problems of the factions and I didn't at all talk about registration. Someone who got the certificate arbitrarily is trying to justify his evil acts."
Indeed, factionalism, intrigue and backstabbing amongst top party leaders are eating up UPC at its Uganda House headquarters on Kampala Road.
The major contending centres of power have been the PPC led by Rwanrarare and the National Organising Committee led by Walubiri. In a move to forestall further acrimony, Obote abolished both organs, having written earlier warning the two men to stop bickering. Walubiri is now secretary general of Wegulo's Steering Committee.
The latest trouble started on March 13 when a section of UPC leaders held a secret meeting at the party headquarters on floor 6 at Uganda House.
Some 12 UPC members attended the meeting chaired by Hajji Wegulo and held, significantly, on a Sunday when the party headquarters are supposed to be closed.
PPC chairman Rwanyarare and the majority of his commissioners did not know about the meeting. Neither did other officials such as UPC Youth Chairman James Otto.
"I'm not sure if the PPC chairman knew about it," PPC member Oweyegha Afunaduula wrote on March 16 complaining to Obote. "I am sure the UPC Youth Chairman James Otto was not aware of it."
Rwanyarare called a crisis meeting of several members the next day, Monday, March 14, and asked Wegulo to explain the intentions of the secret meeting.
A source inside the meeting described it as "stormy and the UPC leaders quarrelled openly". The intrigue in the party has Rwanyarare on one side and Wegulo, Walubiri and Mr Patrick Aroma, a new UPC member from NRM, on the other.
Sources say the March 13 secret meeting fronted Aroma to be UPC youth chairman replacing Otto, the reason Otto was not invited. It is not clear why Otto should be kicked off the party youth chair.
"The meeting was held behind my back but all this was Obote's manipulative politics," Rwanyarare said yesterday. He added that the trouble with Obote started way back in 1993 when Rwanyarare suggested a delegates conference be held to hand over power to younger UPC members.
However, when things boiled over mid last month, most PPC members suspected Obote's hand. Afunaduula wrote an impassioned letter asking him to intervene in the crisis and explain his preference of Aroma for the youth job over Otto.
Obote claims Aroma has done a wonderful job "stopping President Museveni's third term project". "How did [Aroma] do it? Why then is the project in earnest?" Afunaduula wrote Obote in the March 16 letter.
Obote's response was quick and indignant describing Afunaduula's letter as "incongruous and perturbing". He also accused Rwanyarare of "talking too much about the Annual Delegates Conference".
He said Aroma was chosen by the west to fight the third term project and was doing it well. With those sorts of sentiments, it was not surprising that Obote ordered Wegulo, Aroma and Walubiri to pick the original party certificate on March 22 and "keep" because he had grown suspicious of Rwanyarare's motives.
"They refused to give us the certificate when I was one of the applicants who signed for it and they did it on Obote's orders," Rwanyarrare said.
As PPC chairman, Rwanyarare should have picked and kept the certificate for the party, sources say.
On March 25, Afunaduula wrote another angry letter to Obote likening him to Museveni, his archrival. "We have not been able to see the certificate of registration because you according to your letter to the Chairman PPC instructed Walubiri to keep it for you," Afunaduula wrote. "Unfortunately, as a result of this action there is now a school of thought that is holding a conviction that just as NRM=Museveni, UPC=Obote and that Museveni=Obote=Individual merit."
Afunaduula said he wrote the letter, and then described Obote as a "political animal, which has never changed". It was in the midst of this back and forth that Obote shook up the leadership in Kampala in a statement he signed on March 24.
From: Matek Opoko <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: ugandanet@kym.net To: ugandanet@kym.net Subject: [Ugnet] Obote to Return for UPC Meeting Date: Wed, 30 Mar 2005 07:52:29 -0800 (PST)
Obote to Return for UPC Meeting
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The Monitor (Kampala)
March 30, 2005 Posted to the web March 29, 2005
Andrew M. Mwenda & Alex B. Atuhaire Kampala
Exiled former president Apollo Milton Obote will return to Uganda before August, his son and UPC leaders have revealed.
Obote's son, Mr Jimmy Akena, 37, who says he will be returning from exile in Zambia next week, told The Monitor that his father will come back to Uganda in time for the delegates' conference of the Uganda People's Congress (UPC).
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The Chairman of UPC's Presidential Policy Commission, Dr. James Rwanyarare, also told The Monitor yesterday that the party was in advanced preparations for Obote's return.
Rwanyarare said UPC will officially announce plans for Obote's return at the party's weekly press conference at Uganda House today.
Obote, who turns 80 this December, has consistently said he will return to Uganda if and when President Yoweri Museveni's government allows a return to competitive multi-party politics.
According to the government's roadmap for the political transition, a referendum on the return to multi-party politics will be held on June 30. Museveni and the NRM will campaign for a return to party politics, a decision that was endorsed by the ruling Movement's National Council two years ago.
Both Rwanyarare and Akena said Obote, UPC's life-long president, will arrive in Uganda in time to attend the party's delegates' conference.
Rwanyarare said the party conference will be held not later than August this year.
"We are preparing a house in which Obote will live when he returns," he said. Akena, who is also Obote's private assistant on political affairs, said: "As we re-organise the party, the PP (party president) will be coming for the delegates' conference."
Obote is happy about the UPC status, the party having been registered earlier this month, his son said. Akena, who spoke to The Monitor by telephone from Lusaka, said Obote would disregard threats by President Museveni that he would shoot him on return. Museveni said while opening Hotel Africana in 1997 that Obote would be shot once he arrived at Entebbe airport.
Obote later said in a 1997 interview with The Monitor that once he was ready to return, he would disregard Museveni's threat. However, the party faithful in Kampala have often challenged the President to retract his threat as a pre-condition for discussing Obote's return.
Museveni was scheduled to meet Obote at a hotel in Lusaka on July 30 last year, but the twice-deposed president didn't show up. Instead, he sent Akena, his aide, Dr Henry Opiote, and party lawyer, Mr Peter Walubiri.
One Dev Barbar, a Zambian/Kenyan citizen of Indian extraction, had brokered the meeting.
Akena said their return was not discussed at last year's meeting. "That meeting turned out to be a meeting that never was," he said. "There was no agenda and nothing was discussed. It was just chaos."
Akena had announced earlier yesterday that he would also be returning to the country from exile in Lusaka, Zambia "on or about April 6", in time to attend the UPC Consultative Group Conference slated for April 11.
He said he had his father's blessing to return.
Akena said in an email to UPC "netters" that; "The conditions, which I had set for me to return my refugee card, were such that I could in return receive my UPC membership card as I stated in my 'GET BEHIND ME SATAN' posting of 15 October 1997."
"Though I put my application for voluntary repatriation shortly before the party was finally registered, the timing has actually worked out well. I intend to leave Lusaka on or about the 6th of April," he added.
Akena told The Monitor he was not worried about his personal security on return. "Uganda is my country. I am a citizen. I have my rights as a Ugandan. Nobody can deny me my rights to come and associate with others. I will be happy to be home."
He added: "A refugee's greatest hope and desire is to return home. Nobody leaves their country willingly unless you are going to pursue something."
Akena has lived with Obote in Lusaka exile since 1992 - having lived with his mother in Nairobi, since 1985, when his father was overthrown through a military coup in July that same year.
They have lived together with Obote's personal doctor and aide, Dr Opiote. Relevant LinksEast Africa Uganda
Akena said he would not be in the country to represent his father's political interests.
"I don't have a (position) in UPC. I am a citizen who will be coming to participate within my rights," Akena said.
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