Pay the price, former VP Bukenya tells Mbabazi

Former Vice President Gilbert Bukenya has hit out at Ms Jacqueline Mbabazi, the wife ofPrime Minister Amama Mbabazi, and also chairperson of the NRM party’s Women’s League, after she castigated her party for “fascist tendencies” and mistreating her husband over his alleged 2016 presidential ambitions.
Prof Bukenya said if such tendencies exist in the party, then the Mbabazi family is responsible for nurturing them.

In a lengthy and strongly-worded statement, Prof Bukenya said Ms Mbabazi’s cry that President Museveni got doctored intelligence reports against the Mbabazis about their alleged clandestine mobilisation for the presidency, exposed the duo’s “extreme hypocrisy”.

“I would like to right away counsel my dear sister Jacqueline that what goes around comes around. You reap what you sow. Even the Bible tells us that when you kill by the sword, you will die by the same sword,” Prof Bukenya said.
“I am very happy that Jacqueline and perhaps her husband are beginning to reap from their very own dirty handiwork of misusing intelligence structures to engineer and doctor maligning reports against their opponents (real and perceived) to the President,” the former VP added.

Prof Bukenya remarked that the said doctored intelligence reports are similar to the ones Mr Mbabazi’s security apparatus used to malign him, on grounds that he was mobilising Baganda army officers, the cardinal, clergy and entire Catholic flock to build power bases against Mr Museveni.

‘I Will never forget’
“I will never forget a scenario when Mr Mbabazi and his sister-in-law Hope Mwesigye unfairly and without shame, accused me before the President with purely made-up stories. That while on my prosperity-for-all tours in Kigezi, in my capacity as Vice President, I only visited homesteads of Catholics and that I was sleeping at the Catholic Bishop’s residence for night political campaign meetings,” Prof Bukenya lamented.

He continued: “I watched in utmost disbelief, Ms Mwesigye and Mbabazi both boldly tell blatant and cooked-up lies to the President in my presence.”
In his statement this week, Prof. Bukenya further wondered why Mr Mbabazi refused to relinquish the post of Prime Minister as recommended by the NRM’s National Executive Council and Central Executive Committee in 2010, which suggested that whoever takes up the Secretary General post was to resign the other job in government.

He said despite this party position, Mr Mbabazi has refused to relinquish his portfolio as Secretary General and his wife has gone ahead to accuse other senior people like the President and the Speaker who hold party posts together with other state jobs.

“NEC resolved that whoever becomes Secretary General shall not hold any other political job in government save for being a Minister without Portfolio. Personally I offered myself to run as Secretary General well aware that I was doing so at the risk of losing my “big job” of Vice President (as my supporters called it),” he said.

Prof Bukenya said contrary to the known view that Mr Mbabazi defeated him and Gen Kahinda Otafiire with a landslide victory for the post of Secretary General, the reality is that he should have won more resoundingly since the elections were manned by his daughter.

“How can Amama Mbabazi without shame then brag of a landslide [win] in an election that was organised and directly manned by his daughter? Indeed he should have got 100 per cent and beyond. Who would expect President Museveni or Kizza Besigye to lose or perform poorly in an election organised by Muhoozi or Anslem respectively? Who doesn’t know that the polling register of the NRM delegates was and is still in the hands of Nina Mbabazi, the daughter of Amama Mbabazi? She accredited whoever she liked to Namboole [venue of the party elections] and whose vote she was sure of,” Prof Bukenya charged.
We tried to contact Mr Mbabazi for a comment but he did not answer our calls to his cellular phone.

rwanambwa@ug.nationmedia.com