The Opposition Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) has today distanced itself from a group of its supporters who purportedly defected to the reigning regime.
Early this week, Mike Mukula the National Resistance Movement (NRM) Chairperson for Eastern Uganda welcomed sixty opposition members including Pauline Margaret Namagembe, the FDC Flag bearer for the 2016 Woman MP polls, aboard the NRM.
In ecstatic fashion, Mukula promised to oversee other impending defections of other opposition stalwarts enroute to the 2021 general elections.
While speaking on a Central Broadcasting Service’s (CBS) Talk Show on Thursday, the Party’s Deputy Secretary General Harold Kaija disowned the group, calling them “masqueraders seeking survival.”
“Now that people have realized that President Museveni is a trader and he usually gives those who oppose him, even those that are his masquerade as if they don’t support him,” Kaija intimated.
He pointed out that many people have adopted this tactic as a means of increasing their retail price so as to get freebies from the NRM Government.
“For instance, you may say let me belong to FDC, DP, People Power because they have heard that money which was given to Catherine Kusasira (artiste) outweighs that of a constituency,” he explained.
However Kaija said that no matter how many politicians are bought, opposition shall still remain as long as pertinent issues in society are left unattended to.
“Even if you buy me and Muwanga Kivumbi but you have not attended to critical issues, these very microphones shall be taken over by other people who will speak about the same things even much louder,” he elaborated.
A case in point, Kaija said, the income disparities between Uganda’s rich and poor citizens have ramifications of South Africa’s Apartheid system.
“Houses that side (Upper Kampala), are rented at 4,000 dollars. People from that neighborhood educate their children at 10 to 15 million. They have their own churches; Christ the King, All Saints and Muslims pray from BMKs Hotel Africana,” he painted a picture.
“When you go to Kamwokya, Kagugube, Bukesa, Kisenyi , you find a man who rents a house at 20,000 shillings but even pays it in installments,” he stated further.
As of 2014, the richest 10 percent of Uganda’s population were enjoying over one-third (35.7 percent) of national income according to a 2017 Oxfam report.
Whereas Uganda’s income inequalities appear high in 2012 with a Palma Ratio of 2.1, the report titled “WHO IS GROWING; Ending Inequality in Uganda” says this is significantly lower compared to South Africa.
That said, Butambala Legislator Muwanga Kivumbi asked Parties to find ways of harmoniously working with their members as a way of stopping the impending political hemorrhage.
“Otherwise you might find that after elections, that party has no member in the Inter Party Organisation for Dialogue (IPOD),” Muwanga warned.