{UAH} Mbabazi wife loses grip on NRM women’s league
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Mbabazi wife loses grip on NRM women's league
As Susan Muhwezi takes centre stage
Despite her heroics on Tuesday, Jacqueline Mbabazi's once-tight grip on the ruling NRM Women's league (NWL) is weakening, The Observer has established.
It is understood that Ms Mbabazi has been temporarily replaced with Susan Muhwezi, the NWL vice chairperson for western Uganda. Jacqueline is the wife of former prime minister Amama Mbabazi, who was ousted as party secretary general on suspicion of nursing ambitions for chairmanship of the ruling party and national presidency.
Aisha Kabanda, the NWL vice chairperson for central region, told The Observer the 11-member executive committee had decided last year to appoint an acting chairperson on a regional rotational basis because Jacqueline, the elected chairperson, was deemed inactive.
Kabanda, who is also the resident city commissioner for Kampala, said that currently, Muhwezi is the acting chairperson of the league, having taken over from Phoebe Otaala, the vice chairperson for eastern Uganda. Muhwezi, she said, will act in the position for three months and then another executive member shall take over.
Kabanda said this arrangement has been in place for more than six months.
"She [Jacqueline] has issues with the national chairman [President Museveni] but for us we believe such issues should not derail us. We were elected by people who want to see results," Kabanda told us yesterday.
Kabanda however, said Jacqueline remains the substantive chairperson of the league until she is voted out at the delegates' conference. This revelation follows Tuesday's standoff at Imperial Royale hotel in Kampala, when soldiers from the Special Forces Command (SFC) blocked Jacqueline from attending an NWL meeting.
She was allowed in later after President Museveni arrived. However, Ms Muhwezi yesterday denied she had taken over Jacqueline's role. She told The Observer that she had only chaired NWL executive meetings in the absence of the chairperson.
"This does not mean that I am the acting chairperson. In our meetings when the chairperson does not attend, we have to appoint someone to chair them… other members like Otaala and [Christine] Muhindo have also chaired meetings," Muhwezi said.
Asked why a portrait of Jacqueline was conspicuously missing on the chart of members of the NWL executive committee circulated at the Tuesday meeting, Muhwezi said, "We failed to get her photograph."
Lillian Kamugaara, the vice chairperson for Kampala and the convener of the meeting, told The Observer that the photographs on the chart were taken when the executive met Museveni in Rwakitura last year, an event Jacqueline skipped. She denied they were trying to sideline Jacqueline in any way. "She is still our leader," Kamugaara insisted.
JACQUELINE 'LOST CONTROL'
Muhwezi said they could not wait for Jacqueline to organise meetings because she was no longer active in the party. "It is like when you are the father in a home and your children organise a party, you have to know about it. If you don't, it means that you have lost control of your home," Muhwezi said.
With or without her participation, Muhwezi said, the NWL shall march on: "We are 11 people on the executive committee; if 10 people decide to hold a meeting, one person cannot hold us back."
Muhwezi blamed Jacqueline for the dramatic events at Imperial Royale hotel.
"There are other MPs whose names were not on the list but because they are cooperative, they were let in without any hassle," Ms Muhwezi said.
She accused Jacqueline of politicizing the meeting, whose intention was to find strategies of helping women increase household incomes. She said she did not have anything against Jacqueline, adding that on Tuesday, she (Jacqueline) even thanked the organisers of the meeting.
Kamugaara said Jacqueline had not been part of the preparatory meetings for the Tuesday meeting because "she is always busy."
She said her name had been omitted from the attendance list because they were not sure she would attend.
"She contacted us [to be part of the meeting] late when we had submitted the names to State House for vetting," Kamugaara said.
Jacqueline did not answer our repeated calls or reply text messages. But she was quoted in the Daily Monitor of March 26 as saying that she was still a member of the NRM.
"I will keep [in] contact with my people and nobody has the right to keep me out of the NRM party," the newspaper quoted her as having said.
ekiggundu@observer.ug
http://www.observer.ug/news-headlines/37019-mbabazi-wife-loses-grip-on-nrm-women-s-league
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