Museveni’s small fish

The Otunnu group, which comprises the hardcore UPC, accuses Akena for betraying his father who was a sworn opponent of Museveni. They say Akena has become Museveni’s poodle and mole in the party. Matters are not helped by the fact that his wife, Betty Amongi accepted Museveni’s appointment as minister.

When contacted, Otunnu declined to comment and instead referred The Independent to his former deputy, Joseph Bossa, whom he said was the current leader of the party.

Bossa told The Independent that it was clear the state was behind Akena’s capture of Okello House, the headquarters of the party.

“But we are watching their moves and we are also planning,” said Bossa.

Commenting on the meeting, Bossa said the group that met Museveni was not of UPC leaders. He described the IPOD meeting with Museveni as “extremely unfortunate”.

He said that since the 2011 elections, the opposition agreed that if they are ever to dialogue with President Museveni, it should be through a structured, formal dialogue. For him, therefore, those opposition politicians who went to State House are “falling in Museveni’s trap and for tricks he has been using for the last 30 years”.

“That approach is an extension of Museveni’s divide and rule and it is naïve and opportunistic politicians that fall for it,” Bossa said, “If you allow Museveni to set the agenda and the rules of engagement, he will finish you.”

It is clear that Museveni’s move has thrown a dog among the opposition kittens. In the ensuing fray, old fissures have grown in cracks of divisions as opposition stalwarts take intractable positions. The result is an opposition so badly divided that it is inconceivable to see them working together in the near future to bring an end to Museveni’s 30-year reign. Could that, in fact, be Museveni’s objective?

At the heart of the divided opposition is the reality that while some are willing to accept Museveni’s olive branch, for others getting close to Museveni is akin to getting compromised by “the dictator”.

In the FDC, which is the biggest opposition political party, just months to the 2017 party president polls, the leadership of retired Maj. Gen. Mugisha Muntu, the current party president is being targeted by party extremists who fault him for not prioritising the release of Kizza Besigye, its de facto leader, who has spent close to two months in prison on treason charges.

Still, the new Leader of Opposition, FDC’s Winnie Kizza did not rule out meeting with Museveni.

She told The Independent: “Meeting under IPOD is not a bad thing; it is a clear position in FDC that such meetings should not take place at State House but in a neutral location.

“Museveni, for instance, has an office in town here,” she said, “why drag people to State House. If you allow him to do that, he will just bulldoze everyone.”

President Museveni has in the past been said to meet clandestinely with members of opposition groups, but this is the first time he is publicly meeting with them.

Museveni’s public schmoozing with the opposition crested when he appointed three of them to his cabinet, namely Betty Amongi, who is wife of the self-declared UPC president, Jimmy Akena, Nakiwala from DP, and Beti Kamya of the little-known Uganda Federal Alliance party.

Political pundits see a well-choreographed Museveni flirtation with the opposition but it is not clear which direction it is going or how it might end. Clearly, Museveni is not planning a government of national unity as demanded by Uganda’s largest opposition group; the FDC, under its roadmap for a post-Museveni Uganda. Nor is Museveni mooting a coalition government because that could be superfluous, considering his ruling NRM party majority in and out of parliament.

Without a clear lens with which to read into Museveni’s motives, some observers looking at the foggy pictures before them are none-the-less praising Museveni for “taking a step closer to the much called for dialogue amongst political parties”. Many are, however, castigating the opposition politicians that met Museveni at State House as “opportunistic and politically naïve”.