It’s close to 16 years since Dr. Kizza Besigye became the first high profile cadre of the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) to sever ties with it enroot to establishing himself as the face of opposition.
Since then, he has contested the presidency three times, had countless run-ins with the law over his abrasive political style characterized with feisty activism and many times ending up in detention.
But Besigye, NRM’s first National Political Commissar and one time minister of state for internal affairs contends that he nurses no iota of animus either towards President Yoweri Museveni as a person or the NRM as a political party.
“Many of those who claim to love Mr. Museveni and NRM do so out of selfish interests. I can at least claim to be among the very few people who loved and accepted to work with Mr. Museveni when he had nothing to offer,” Besigye who concluded his presidential campaigns in Bunyoro region on Saturday told his supporters in Bulisa town.
While campaigning in the greater north late last month, Besigye said that a section of Ugandans have labeled him a bitter and an angry man who might turn out to be vindictive ounce elected president.
It’s to this section of voters that Besigye tried to appeal to in Kiryandongo, Bulisa and Masindi by indicating that his decision to sever ties with NRM was premised on principle and not any personal differences with Museveni.
At Kabango, Ntooma and Bulima in Masindi district, Besigye revealed that it was with pain rather than anger that he decided to oppose NRM and that few of NRM’s current top echelon can claim to know the ruling party better than him.
“In Africa, a woman who claims to love a baby more than its actual mother can be mistaken for a cannibal,” Besigye said.
Besigye was a medical doctor at Agha Khan Hospital Nairobi when he, together with his contemporaries like Gen. David Sejusa, former army chief, Gen. Mugisha Muntu and Gen. Henry Tumukunde decided to join the guerilla war that brought NRM to power in 1986. Besigye was Museveni’s personal bush war doctor.
“The Luwero bush war claimed the lives of over 500,000 people. But all these people died in vain because Mr. Museveni has betrayed the ideals for which we fought,” Besigye told his supporters in Butiaba on the shores of Lake Albert.
Besigye who unlike in West Nile and Acholi sub region had FDC area MPs in tow had to do with Tororo County MP, Geoffrey Ekanya, in Bunyoro – a region where Uganda’s biggest opposition party has no single lawmaker or district chairperson.
Besigye attributed what he claimed to be maladministration in Uganda and all its attendant problems like impunity and corruption to Ugandans not having a say on who occupies the highest office in the land.
“Since independence, every president has come to power through the barrel of the gun and all of them have been removed using guns. Ounce a people has no say on who leads them, they cannot hold such leaders accountable,” Besigye told his supporters in Buliisa.
Besigye also delved into the recent contentious promise by Museveni to give every Malwa (a local brew) group in the 112 distrcits sh2m if elected.
Besigye avers that such a promise is a microcosm of skewed priorities of NRM government which he claims is responsible for diverting resources from the essential services required by Ugandans. “At least, let Mr. Museveni first give malwa brewers clean water to save them from contracting typhoid and vaccinate them against Hepatitis B,” a wryly smiling Besigye said in Bulisa.
Uganda is battling an outbreak of Hepatitis B in parts of the Teso sub region and West Nile through mass vaccination. The locals in the former sub region enjoy imbibing malwa.
Museveni has since clarified on the controversy spawned by his promise while campaigning in Teso, noting that his promise of sh2m to every malwa group is aimed at fostering saving and investment by those who enjoy imbibing the local brew.
“I’m not stupid, I don’t drink but I know that my people who drink also do savings. We shall support them,” Museveni told the media after his promise had attracted ridicule from a big section of the elite.
