{UAH} Mbabazi a darling of ugandans
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7:40 PM |
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You can malice him,u can abuse him,you can tarnish him but he remain the symbol of the true leadership features of the true vision and aspirations of the NRA and NRM...
He is too royal to his leaders but extremely loyal to the people of Uganda...he knows when Uganda came from and where it is going..
Thank you all,
Luzindana Adam Buyinza
Public Opinions
From: william Ekwelu
Sent: 12/7/2013 11:23 AM
To: Ugandans-at-Heart
Subject: {UAH} Museveni's war within NRM
Museveni's war within NRM
It is not clear how the latest clash between Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi and the Speaker of Parliament, Rebecca Kadaga, will end. But it is interesting to watch how President Yoweri Museveni will handle it.
In the past, Museveni has played off one leader in the party, government, or security agencies, against the other. Under such a game plan, the question would be which of the two, Kadaga or Mbabazi, is to be kicked off the Yellow Bus this time?
Recent events indicate, however, that with too many clashes between top cadres of the party, this is no longer Museveni's game. Some within the party have out-grown his strings; they hold power centres.
It is, therefore, inconceivable that Museveni can sack Mbabazi. It is also hard to see him attempting to unseat Kadaga. Instead, he will possibly wait and cheer the winner of this seemingly clash of David versus Goliath proportions.
Political experts and colleagues say Kadaga and Mbabazi have a history of animosity but their latest clash is the first to be played out on national television and on the floor of Parliament.
It erupted publicly when Kadaga spoke out about Mbabazi on Aug.20 at Parliament; first in the House and again on national television. She said he should stop accusing her of meeting opposition MPs and sympathising with them.
"I am a Speaker of Uganda; I am the speaker for all Members of Parliament and the way Parliament operates," Kadaga said, "you talk to different people on different issues so for the Prime Minister to go and launch an attack on me because I talked to opposition MPs, it is very wrong."
Kadaga said that in 2005 Uganda adopted a multiparty system of government, which means the views of many parties and their interests should be taken into account.
"When I took the oath to become speaker," Kadaga said, "I said I would be speaker for everyone and I want government to understand that."
Then she threw in the zinger.
"Prime Minister Nsibambi was Prime Minister for 12 years," she said, "not once did he go to radio to attack the Speaker, even when they disagreed, he would come to the office and sort out the matters but this one [Mbabazi] has made it a habit, and I think it is not right."
"I don't attack the Executive, I don't attack the Judiciary," Kadaga said, "I want them also to behave themselves and stop attacking me as a person and my institution."
A day after Kadaga spoke, she had to postpone a parliamentary session because over 80 members of cabinet dodged Parliament. Sources say the ministers have vowed to deal with Kadaga and, even with the fallacy of separation of powers in Uganda, Kadaga needs the ministers to be present for her to conduct substantive legislative business.
She knows an executive boycott could stymie her work. But it could also create a public backlash from the public against the Cabinet.
Conscience of Parliament
It appears that for 10 years, while working as Edward Sekandi's deputy from 2001, Kadaga decided that if the opportunity arose, she would be nobody's stooge.
Immediately she was elected speaker, Kadaga became popular for her handling of a House dominated by Museveni's NRM by appearing to give the few opposition voices a platform to vent.
Nobody was fooled. The numbers were against the opposition but Kadaga's independent-mindedness ensured that they had a voice if not the vote.
She became the conscience of Parliament and an admired public figure. Her popularity crested when in 2012, outspoken Kabale priest Fr. Gaetano Batanyenda publicly endorsed her to become Uganda's first woman President.
At around the same time, former Church of Uganda Archbishop Henry Luke Orombi said Uganda would be well-served if the next president is a woman. He was understood to be vouching for Kadaga's abilities.
A survey by Research World International that same June showed Kadaga to be the favorite for next president across the political divide.
In the ever-present power games, President Museveni and Mbabazi obviously did not miss that. Her balloon had to be deflated.
If there is anything Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi has mastered in his 37-year political career, it is the art of posturing as the most powerful and clipping the wings of 'underlings' like Kadaga.
In many cases, he has succeeded even at causing the downfall of those who fail to accept him as boss or oppose him. Meanwhile, those who understood his agenda have often been promoted.
Former Vice President Gilbert Bukenya put himself among the Mbabazi opponents and lost. But others, including former deputy Inspector General of Government (IGG) Raphael Baku, minister of State for Bunyoro Affairs Saleh Kamba, and former minister of State for Health James Kakooza, have good testimonies of what it means to be in Mbabazi's good books.
Ssemujju Ibrahim Nganda, the Kyadondo East MP, describes how Mbabazi had succeeded in posturing and making himself and everybody else believe that he was the defacto number two to Museveni, whose word even in Parliament under Kadaga's predecessor would be final.
"With Kadaga, this has changed," Ssemujju said, "She is not like Sekandi (former Speaker now Vice President) who always followed Mbabazi's directives. For her, she came in on merit and cannot be blackmailed by Mbabazi."
Ssemujju attributes the problem between them to Mbabazi's bruised ego because Kadaga has eliminated his role as power-broker in the Speaker's chamber.
"Museveni has to directly deal with Kadaga, he has to convince her and not to order or direct her," Ssemujju says, "But Mbabazi is extremely intelligent, he cannot attack Kadaga directly but he will look out for opportunities to undermine her."
Kadaga knows that by taking on Mbabazi she is effectively fighting for her political life against a master of execution. Fortunately, she has had a lot of practice since she was elected speaker in 2011.
Like Mbabazi, she appears to have inflated confidence, fueled by political ambition, and a willingness to dabble in intrigue.
It is not clear what Kadaga, who will be just 60 years old when the next elections are held in 2016, is planning.
Until now, and since she joined politics in 1989, Mbabazi had been in the thick-of it; her fortune has depended on President Museveni. He made her minister for Parliamentary affairs in 1999, a position that propelled her to her current role. Will the ladder now be pulled from under her feet? If that happens, has she grown enough wings to soar past Museveni and Mbabazi?
While Ssekandi carefully hid any ambitions he might have harbored, Kadaga and Mbabazi, observers say, are not shy to flaunt their credentials as "presidential material".
Alhaji Abdul Nadduli, the NRM party vice chairman for Buganda who also sits with the duo on the NRM's top organ, the Central Executive Committee (CEC), was blunt about this when asked about it by The Independent.
"Those ones," he said, "it is succession that is disturbing them."
But the clash between them has sucked in the entire Executive and Parliament and could have wide implications on the functioning of President Yoweri Museveni's government. Many ministers are publicly rallying behind Mbabazi "to deal with Kadaga" while MPs are standing behind Kadaga to "tame Mbabazi".
So who's boss?
Two days after Kadaga spoke against him, on Aug.22, Mbabazi unleashed two of his barking lieutenants; Minister without portfolio Richard Todwong and Media Centre boss Ofwono Opondo to refute allegations that the prime minister had accused Kadaga of harboring opposition sympathies. The rebuttal fell flat.
Todwong said Mbabazi had tried to reach the Speaker to assure her that he had made no such statements but Kadaga had refused to take the prime minister's phone call. That was refuted.
"It is not true that I am not accessible," Kadaga said immediately afterwards, "No one has tried to reach me and failed, and it's not about finding me; this matter has been in the press for two weeks now, he [Mbabazi] should have gone to the press and clarified." An army of MPs cheered.
A meeting by the Parliamentary Commission, where the two sit, also failed to reconcile them. This could worsen the already delicate grip of the Museveni administration on power, although party stalwarts like Nadduli deny it.
"It does not affect the NRM," Nadduli said, "It affects those involved. Those watching them will now judge them according to what they are doing."
But others like renowned constitutional lawyer, Laudislaus Rwakafuzi, think differently. He told The Independent that the standoff could precipitate reforms.
"The standoff shows that Uganda needs a Speaker who is independent of any political party," he said, adding that beyond structural safeguards being entrenched in the law to protect the opposition which, by definition, is always the minority in a democracy, attitudes need to change.
"This idea of imagining that because the opposition is a small group that should be ignored is very absurd," he said.
If Rwakafuzi's ideas are picked up as a campaign platform, especially towards the election campaign period of 2016 when concessions are often easily given, it is not far-fetched to see movement on them.
Among issues that need to be resolved in the current tussle is the tangle of structural hierarchies.
As Prime Minister, Mbabazi should be receiving orders from Kadaga because she is his boss at two levels; in the NRM, as the second deputy vice chairperson of the party - she is second to Alhaji Moses Kigongo and third to the national party chairman President Yoweri Museveni - in the party hierarchy.
In the government, Kadaga is also third in the hierarchy, as Speaker, she is second to the Vice President and third to the President. She is followed by the Chief Justice and then the Prime Minister.
However, as the Leader of Government business, Mbabazi exerts a broader sweep of power; he is the boss of over 80 ministers who sit in Parliament. Secondly, as the Secretary General of the NRM, he is the administrator of a party with its nationwide network, and whose majority in Parliament dwarfs everybody else. The NRM boasts of a 258-majority in the 383-member House.
The result of these mixed roles for Mbabazi and Kadaga in the government, in the party, and based on constitutional hierarchy, is confusion about who is whose boss when and where.
Kadaga, today faces accusations of usurping the power of Parliament in interpreting the Constitution following her ruling in which she declined to declare vacant the seats of four MPs that the NRM expelled from the party and wanted out of Parliament. But Theodere Ssekikubo, one of the four MPs that the NRM 'expelled,' knows Mbabazi's lethal ability to turn a crisis on its head to his advantage.
"You remember after the Delegates Conference," Ssekikubo said, "the move was about how to remove Mbabazi (as secretary general) but then the issue of rebel MPs emerged and Museveni put aside Mbabazi to concentrate on the rebel. When you see Mbabazi now coming off as the most avowed crusader of the fight against the opposition, you wonder."
In another controversial case, Kadaga and other members of the Parliamentary Commission hired Dr Sylvester Onzivua, the Mulago pathologist, to take samples of the late Cerina Nebanda, the Butalejja woman MP, to South Africa for an independent investigation in what killed her, Mbabazi was the first to come out and dismiss such a decision saying that as a member of that Commission, he was never consulted about that decision. The Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Jacob Oulanyah, was also forced to disown that decision. Kadaga was left on the spot.
Early last year, Jan.2, the CEC met. At the meeting, there were several issues stemming mostly from a storm in Parliament over the oil bribes in which Mbabazi was implicated. The storm had sent Kadaga's star rising.
While at the meeting, sources told The Independent that Museveni presented intelligence reports showing that Kadaga was mobilising in Busoga region, holding meetings to boost her presidential bid come 2016.
When Museveni showed the documents to Kadaga, she dismissed them reportedly saying they were the handiwork of Mbabazi who was fighting her.
Mbabazi reportedly did not deny his involvement in the report.
He reportedly asked her: "Is it not true?"
Once again, Kadaga who had entered the meeting with all the tramp cards was being pinned against the wall. It could happen again.
Mbabazi's ability to invent himself is partly historical.
In the 1980s bush war days, Mbabazi, while operating in the external wing of the National Resistance Army (NRA) carried himself as boss.
While those in the bush wore tattered clo
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