{UAH} UNAA Peace-talks (1)

Over the past year, I had deliberately decided to stay out of the fight between the Board of Trustees, The Executive and the Council. I naively thought that the fight would run its course and exhaust the combatants so that UNAA would be united and happy after the San Diego convention. 

I am now convinced that all UNAA members should jump in, in any way possible because the fight threatens to tear UNAA further apart.

To that effect, I approached both sides (Moses Wilson's "Good Judgment" camp and Francis Senoga's "Clear Direction" camp) and told them that the current "peace-talks" are not going to unite UNAA and a new approach is needed.

Brief history:

Over the past year, several attempts have been initiated by various people, including some BoT members, ordinary members, and some Council members. At the Special Members' meeting in San Diego, none of the elected UNAA leaders spoke in favor of talks. But several ordinary members from the Wilson camp spoke up in favor and against talking to the Francis camp. Though UNAA has about 500 members, there were just about 25 members present (almost all of them were exclusively from the Wilson camp) and about 20 Kla politicians and business people who are not even members (Mr Wilson has claimed today that the meeting was turned into a "townhall" but that decision was never communicated to us!  Mr Wilson does not even have powers to turn a members' meeting into something else).

A suggestion came up that both camps (Wilson's and Senoga's) come up with 5 people to start peace talks.  Two of the powerful voices against talks were Mr. Moses Wilson and Mr David Mureeba. Mr Wilson claimed that "UNAA already has 3 bodies (BoT, Executive and Council) there was no need for a fourth one"! 

Two of the most reasonable voices in favor of talks, were politicians and business people from Kla who were non-UNAA members.

Towards the end of the meeting, Mr Wilson left the room. At this time, there were about 20 or so people left in the room. They decided to request 5 people to volunteer to go to talk to the Francis camp (since the Wilson camp had refused to nominate the 5 people to represent them). 

That group of "volunteers" met the Francis camp and came back to brief the Wilson camp (I took a cute video and pics of Moses chairing the meeting to get briefed while the UNAA President is perched on the corner of the table, looking in...as they say, "a picture is worth a thousand words"!). As I was taking my pics, I happened to catch a few sentences from Tim Gaburungyi and Moses Wilson...needless to say, Moses was against the talks and did not like what they were telling him.

I am almost certain that these talks will never get anywhere: the volunteers do not understand the dynamics of the dispute, the volunteers do not have clout in the Wilson camp and the volunteers' approach/focus is similar to other failed talks. 

In my next posting, I'll write about my humble views on what I think is the best way forward.

thanks

 

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