Sending Nambooze on a Red Cross or Fire Brigade mission to Masaka could turn out to be the greatest miscalculation the party may have ever committed this year, particularly at this period when her own house at home is under fire calling for her personal involvement to extinguish it.
Open Letter to NUP President
Your Excellency Robert Kyagulanyi Sentamu ‘Bobi Wine’;
ASSIGNING NAMBOOZE TO BATTLE MPUUGA AND BWANIKA IS COUNTER-PRODUCTIVE TO NUP, DETRIMENTAL TO HER OWN POLITICS
Mukono Municipality MP Betty Nambooze Bakireke is now permanently stationed in Masaka on an official assignment, according to her own statement, by her bosses NUP President Kyagulanyi and his Buganda Vice President Muhammad Muwanga Kivumbi, to educate (sic!) Masaka voters why it is taboo to elect into office as MPs Mathias Mpuuga for Nyendo-Mukungwe, Abed Bwanika for Kimaanya-Kabonera and Juliet Kakande (as Woman representative for Masaka City.
This is contained in Nambooze’s words in Kalangala park in Nyendo at a function where NUP leaders commissioned the campaign to sweep all elective positions in Masaka City.
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Literary, she told her listeners that “I was not ready to travel here but my Vice President in-charge of Buganda Muwanga Kivumbi instructed me to represent him in commissioning the party campaigns and, similarly, the party boss Kyagulanyi assigned me to be travelling here very often to explain the evils committed by the three people warranting a vote boycott on them”.
Mr. President, while Ugandans wish to hope that it was not a slip of the tongue that you sanctioned Hon. Nambooze to Masaka, you need to be told in black and white that you committed a great disservice to the party, and to the Honourable MP herself in a number of ways.
Sending Nambooze on a Red Cross or Fire Brigade mission to Masaka could turn out to be the greatest miscalculation the party may have ever committed this year, particularly at this period when her own house at home is under fire calling for her personal involvement to extinguish it.
One such mission in Mukono North where she is alleged to have told voters, truthfully or not, that she financially contributed to the tuition of former State Minister for Water, Ronald Kibuule (as NRM parliamentary contender outside her constituency) during his school days, turned unhealthy for her when Kibuule explained to voters with all evidence especially since many saw him as a boy right from primary through to university, that he was educated with President Museveni’s personal funding.
To back his explanation concretely, Kibuule narrated how the Municipality MP lived a pauper’s life in her youthful days, vending banana leaves to markets and selling pieces of Nile Perch fish, without the capacity to pay for his tuition. Nambooze has since kept silent after Kibuule’s explanation.
Kibuule who spared no words while castigating Nambooze, blamed her for continually harassing government which okayed, through parliament speaker, her travel and stay in the US where she allegedly stayed for a year on private business when she pretended to be sick, at a staggering sh3bn off the taxpayers purse.
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As it turned out to be, speculators opined that the MP known for her craftiness, was devising of ways beefing up her support with a massive following of voters from outside her constituency when she holds a proposed mega rally, in the hope that this would earn her a few more votes from constituents who shift their support the last minute, to a candidate deemed to have the biggest following.
Speculators further hold it that Nambooze is planning to travel to Mukono South to campaign for the NUP flag bearer youthful Robert Maseruka in similar hope that he will, like Mukono North’s Abdallah Kiwanuka, sanction his supporters to beef up Nambooze’s mega rally for similar reasons like those above. But of course, all this is speculation so far!
Mr. President, back at home, and I believe you are already aware of this, our cherished legislator Madam Teacher Nambooze is nursing a world of trouble with practically all her former political colleagues who have ganged up against her for what they consider foul tongue, selfishness, dictatorship, know-it-all and only-bull-in-the-kraal attitude which, they claim, has compromised her ability to deliver service, and stimulated an abusive language attacking whoever she deems to be an enemy.
Ironically, all these are people she either groomed into politics or somehow supported morally to raise to the top, they include; former Mukono Municipality Mayor, George Fred Kagimu who was with her in the Democratic Party, former district woman MP Hanifah Nabukeera, district LC V chairman, Rev. Dr. Peter Bakaluba Mukasa, Central Division Speaker Allan Mawanda, all of whom are now running against her, to mention but a few.
Prominent among the few colleagues she still retains is pioneer Mukono Municipality Mayor, former Buganda caucus leader in the 10th parliament, Johnson Muyanja Ssenyonga, himself currently pitted against the no-nonsense former twice LC V chairman and one-time RDC Francis Lukooya Mukoome ‘Bulldozer’ in the race for the district chairmanship.
Among the disgruntled people she has generated among the citizenry are people transporting their kins referred from rural health centres to Mukono hospitals, international travelers along the Kampala-Jinja highway and others, who have been inconvenienced several times by her heavy following of boda boda riders, (who are said to be hired for the job) and foot soldiers; these are known to block the road for several hours as she travels first for nomination and now while going to campaign venues.
The only element of hope is a statement from the RDC Hajat Fatuma Ndisaba who has several times stated that these activities by Nambooze and others travelling in her style are provocations to police to fire tear gas canisters at them so as to get an undeniable excuse to blame government for witch hunting them.
Ndisaba has however several times declared, “As long as I am in control of security, no single tear gas canister will be fired at these provocations, although I am not saying that we shall let them go scot free as a we have many other ways of containing them without firing tear gas which harms even the innocent poor street vendors”.
Mr. President, you must by now have picked Masaka residents’ reactions to Nambooze’s arrival and business in Masaka and if you have not, here we go. The National Chairman of the Democratic Front DF Samuel Lubega Mukaaku has laughed off your actions, arguing that this is testimony that the NUP has already been derailed from the national liberation objective and turned to personal ambitions.
Mukaaku also noted that President Museveni must by now be the happiest man because he pointed out, NUP is now fighting Museveni’s battles.
“But this team must be told categorically that they are wasting their time and other resources because Masaka voters know what they need and do not have to wait for a person herself embroiled in political turmoil at home, to tell them anything,” Mukaaku confidently said.
Voters in Masaka have their own story to tell. Robert Lutalo said that there is nothing new in what Nambooze is doing, because he notes, “this is the Ugandan style of politics – engaging ideological and opportunistic gigs to try to see oneself through a problematic situation depending on the dynamics of the day”.
Deogratius Ssettumba is very skeptical that NUP ever assigned Nambooze to Masaka to tell the voters there, people closer to Mpuuga than Nambooze is, his evils. He clarifies that Nambooze’s mission is to canvas for votes for her colleague Gyaviira Ssebina.
Ugandans believe that there is still time to make good shortcomings that may have been committed by the NUP like assigning the Mukono Municipality legislator to campaign in Masaka – if it is really true that she went there under the blessing of the top party leaders as she claims.
By Mpalanyi John Baptist, a Concerned Citizen