INTERVIEW: Gen. Tumukunde’s presidential dream

Reporter: You have declared your plan to stand for President…why should Ugandans vote for you as President and what is the difference between you and the previous candidates?

Tumukunde: My main question is, why not? How many presidents did we try and they were not working? And what stopped others from being functional? As far as I am concerned, these are messages that give little hope to the people of Uganda. The intention is by those occupying power to give little hope to Ugandans as if everything is impossible.

But I come in with my own attributes, experience and exposure. I don’t think anyone has to lose hope about the future of change. Whenever I am being interviewed, I am asked whether I am related to President Museveni. These are not the issues. The issue is what is at stake today. What is at stake defines what you need to do to solve it.

Reporter: what is at stake? We have a growing population. This growing population is a serious matter. For example World Bank estimates that at least you need 600,000 to one million jobs being created in this country but we are creating only 10,000. Therefore, you have high unemployment. How do you want to solve this?

Tumukunde:  We already have budgets for the youth, for the women. This is our money. How we position it is our business. What if we posted US$100m, which is the general value of Kololo [area], in Post Bank and we also encourage people to develop business instead of handouts or train them to handle business.

Instead of getting vehicles from the government of India, why don’t we get small machines that manufacture small things that can be installed in a garage to do business? The government of Uganda owes local businessmen Shs3 trillion. What if you borrowed money and paid them? It would bring life to the economy.

Tumukunde, a thoughtful and calm talker, has raised other issues via other platforms including corruption and general inefficiencies in government operations including issues about election rigging.  He has also said that people who organize elections are the same who count the votes and announce the winner in line with rigging.

To counter inefficiencies in the electoral process, Tumukunde says, he knows the disease and will find the medicine.

“I want to send a signal to those who earn money from government to stop working for individuals. March 2021 is not far.”

Tumukunde says it is possible to defeat Museveni.   “I don’t think anyone has to lose hope about the future of change,” he said. Tumukunde also sounds frustrated each time his family relationship to President Museveni is brought up.  “These are not the issues. The issue is what is at stake today. What is at stake defines what you need to do to solve it.”

Some opposition politicians have not entirely dismissed Tumukunde’s announcement but insist that time will tell whether he is a joker or not.  Paul Mwiru, the MP for Jinja East (FDC) and sympathizer with the Alliance for National Transformation and People Power Pressure group led by Robert Kyagulanyi (Bobi Wine) says if he is contributing to the struggle “personally I would have no problem.”

“I don’t think anybody has monopoly over contributing to the struggle…in any case he is not attacking us, he is attacking the government,” he told The Independent. Mwiru added that time will be the best judge. “Our work is to play our part.”

Other long serving MPs like Barnabas Tinkasimire, the Buyaga West MP with the unflattering moniker of NRM “rebel MP” have mixed feelings.

“Of course Tumukunde even when you are near him, you move around him with suspicion,” Tinkasimire who also doubles as the mobiliser for People Power in Bunyoro sub-region    told The Independent.

“But sometimes when you look at the story of Besigye, sometimes you want to say maybe he [Tumukunde] is genuine because he has been imprisoned before,” he said, “Tumukunde is welcome if he is serious…let’s wait and see if he will sustain what he is saying…if he is a spy, everybody will see him.”

Mwambutsya Ndebesa, a lecturer of history at Makerere University College of Humanities and Social Sciences and a political pundit said that going by the tone and the language that Tumukunde is using, he seems to have parted ways with Museveni this time around.

“But then I stop there and say he is unserious about why he is standing because he seems to be bitter saying Museveni has closed the political space yet he was part of the project closing it,” he said.

“Tumukunde might be representing some other descending voices…but for him to tell us he wants to take the country to a different direction, I don’t believe him,” he said.

Ndebesa said that for Tumukunde to beat Museveni’s machinery, he has got to mobilize other people to support him.

“You must have a movement, a force or social base which you use to beat somebody else,” he told The Independent. Ndebesa said that Tumukunde has been with Museveni longer and that they have many things in common, which puts him at a disadvantage of getting a natural constituency to begin from and meet his agenda.

Still, Ndebesa notes, Tumukunde has an advantage of knowing Museveni’s system in which he is an outright insider and so he might get some legitimacy and credibility in what he says.

For veteran opposition leader like players like Dr. Besigye, Tumukunde should know that the struggle to remove Museveni has to go beyond the voting process because the latter cannot remove Museveni. At the NRM politburo, officials there say Tumukunde is their sympathizer and he is not a threat to Museveni’s 2021 presidential ambitions.

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