{UAH} Gen Katumba, Bukenya speak out on ‘spy tapes’
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The chief of defence forces, Gen Katumba Wamala, has strongly denied claims that he was investigated over secret meetings with former Vice President Gilbert Bukenya.
The claims, by Gen David Sejusa (Tinyefuza), indicated that President Museveni had been given tape recordings of meetings between Bukenya and Gen Katumba Wamala.
In an August 13, 2013 e-mail, Sejusa said: "Tell Wamala to be careful because I know what I'm talking about. Just a few months ago, he [Wamala] was being accused of working with Prof [Gilbert] Bukenya and tapes allegedly of Wamala and [former VP] Bukenya were taken to Museveni. Wamala knows what I'm talking about."
Sejusa said Wamala was a prisoner of the NRM government, who was only being used "to buy time as they (government) fidget to recover from the shocks (of his exile) which won't be simple."
Sejusa's latter claim appears to feed into unconfirmed claims that President Museveni had planned to install a younger and easier to control general, such as Kale Kayihura, at the top of the army, only to be unsettled by Sejusa's outbursts since fleeing the country.
Until he fled to the United Kingdom in April, Sejusa was the coordinator of the intelligence services and MP representing the army, so his claims are unlikely to be perceived as sheer gossip. However, in a Monday interview with The Observer, Gen Katumba said the claims were only a figment of Sejusa's imagination.
"I have never heard about either the alleged tapes being taken to the president or my alleged connection to Prof Bukenya. I can only refer to Gen Sejusa's utterances as fiction and I have no time to waste on such fiction," Katumba told us.
This is not the first time Bukenya's name has been linked to clandestine meetings with army officers. In a 2006 newspaper interview, Bukenya alleged that a mafia clique in government was hunting him down.
He said this very clique was behind the investigation of his wealth and had accused him before the president of quietly meeting senior Baganda military officers at the time.
Bukenya speaks
In a separate interview today, Bukenya denied ever meeting Gen Katumba.
"I would be stupid to hold such a meeting, a meeting that is tribal. Tribalism must not be mixed with politics, it's very dangerous and I don't practise the politics of tribalism, and neither would I practise politics of sectarianism," Bukenya said.
The only interaction between him and army officers, Bukenya explained, happened in his official capacity as Vice President.
"Whenever I travelled to districts where there were cases of insecurity, commanding officers in the army and police and RDCs in their capacity as chairpersons of security committees in the districts would come and give me a brief, and I would always meet them in the presence of my aide, so there was nothing secretive about such meetings," he said.
"Those allegations were leveled against me by speculators, or call them rumour-mongers, and they were all found to be false, I don't need to meet any army commander for my political struggles.
"Tribalism and sectarianism is the number one danger that we want to remove from [our] politics; that is the main reason why we want to go into politics of the country's main leadership to create unity," Bukenya added.
Parliamentary seat
Katumba also told us that the army would soon announce its stand on Sejusa's continued stay in Parliament after consulting its lawyers. Sejusa recently asked the speaker of Parliament for a three-month extension to his official leave from the House.
Gen Sejusa fled to London days before a dossier leaked to the media, pointing to a plot to kill top army and government officials opposed to the alleged presidential ambitions of Brig Muhoozi Kainerugaba, President Museveni's son. These claims have been vehemently denied by the army and government.
If the speaker allows Sejusa another extension to his leave, the renegade general will continue to be entitled to a salary as one of the 10 MPs representing the army. However, Katumba Wamala is not comfortable with such an extension.
"It can only be in Uganda and in the NRM government where one declares war on government and continues to earn money from the same government. Sejusa should be happy with such a government," Katumba said, tongue-in-cheek.
The army can remove Gen Sejusa from Parliament after he misses 15 house sittings without explanation, as per Article 81 (1) (d) of the Constitution. But Sejusa's lawyer, Joseph Luzige, says any attempt by the UPDF to remove his client from Parliament would be challenged in court.
"UPDF wishes to proceed unconstitutionally by 'removing' our client from Parliament without due regard to the relevant legal provisions. We are, however, confident that such manoeuvres shall be resisted by your good office as and when they contravene clear constitutional provisions of how an MP vacates office," Luzige says in his letter to the speaker, dated August 16, 2013.
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