Akena has failed UPC reconciliation - Bossa

What have you in UPC been up to?
Politically, with effect from July 1 this year, I took over as party president as per the UPC constitution. The UPC constitution provides that when the position of party president becomes vacant for any lawful reason, the sitting vice president takes over. So with effect from July this year, the position of party president became vacant following the resignation of president Olara Otunnu and I took over.
When I took over under those circumstances as per our constitution, my primary responsibility was to organise elections within a period of six months. But my situation was totally unprecedented because no UPC president ever took office in the circumstances that I did, what I did was to put up a committee of seven members to help me organise elections.
I gave them instructions to arrange matters in such a way that the party holds a national council meeting and district conferences where the district conferences choose those who have expressed interest in becoming party president. Now after that process has been completed, we shall hold a delegates’ conference in which the party president will be ultimately elected from among those who would have received preference from the district conferences.
The committee gave me instructions to go to the regions of Uganda and meet the district chairpersons of the party. First, to inform them about what is happening and also clear the air about the claims by [Lira Municipality MP Jimmy] Akena that he is the president and also seek their views on the way forward.

What of the issue of collecting signatures?
What I am doing is to ask leaders to renew the list of delegates. This means that clearing the register of the party so that people who have died, people who have crossed over to other parties, do not continue being on the register of UPC.
The aim is to ensure that the leadership of UPC is determined by the members of UPC, we would like to ensure that the policies of UPC are determined by UPC members. We want to clean up our register so that whoever comes to the national council meeting is a genuine UPC member.

The Akena faction suspects that this is a disguised attempt to de-register UPC supporters at the grassroots who are allied to them
This thing is going to be as transparent as possible. And as long as no announcement has been made about the position of Akena and [Lands minister Betty] Amongi, as per our constitution, on the face they look like UPC’s and they will be able to attend our meetings.

Are you interested in permanently taking over the leadership of UPC?
I do not intent to stand for party president for the next five years. I want this thing to be as transparent as possible. I do not want this thing to be questioned.

What is your source of funding for the activities that you are engaged in now?
We have been very lucky in the sense that our forefathers formed a commercial wing to partly finance the activities of UPC. The Milton Obote Foundation (MOF) has one of the best sites in this town, there are shops, there are offices and they give us free space. If we did not have free space, we would find it very difficult to rent office space in this town.

With the preamble you have given, it is clear that you are basically organising activities without the blessing of the other UPC faction. Is UPC a party in limbo?
Not at all. There can be only one party. I can tell you that UPC is one whole and indivisible. When I tell you that I went to clarify to members and the leaders of the regions about various claims, I took with me a judgment which categorically states that Mr Akena was not elected party president under the UPC constitution.
The same judgment stated that any meeting that purported to elect Mr Akena as UPC president was null and void. So legally, as per the court order, Mr Akena is not the party president and, therefore, there is no competing presidency within UPC.

What’s a fact is that there is a conflict in UPC. What could you say is the genesis of the conflict, your disagreement with Akena?
The genesis is very simple, long before party president Olara Otunnu resigned, he was saying there are people within UPC who are working for the interests of NRM. That became very clear after the [2016] general election where Betty Amongi, who was elected on the UPC ticket, went on to become a minister in the NRM government. You cannot, unless you are NRM, be a minister in the NRM government.
It is very clear that the Constitution contemplated a one-party government. It is a winner-takes-it all government. If it had wished, it would have allowed for an alliance. It does not allow an alliance of parties to form a government. The third option under the Commonwealth Alliance is for individuals who do not belong to any political party to form a government.
What Museveni has done by bringing on board DP and UPC members to join the NRM to form a government is completely illegal. So the genesis is about the people who want to divide the UPC from within. And I can tell you that Mr Akena and some other people never accepted that Otunnu won the presidency in March 2010.
President Museveni has made two very strong statements. One is that by 2021, there will be no Opposition party. He has said UPC has been sorted out. What do you think he meant by that? He thinks that as far as UPC is concerned, that by co-opting Akena and his wife, he has defeated UPC.

You are making it clear that since 2010, the UPC leadership knew very well that there was an inside hand supported by the regime to disorganise the party, why didn’t the UPC leadership crack down on the suspected individuals?
Time clarifies everything. When you make an announcement, when the evidence is not crystal clear, you are unlikely to be believed. What Otunnu did was to let time be the decider. And indeed Akena has come out to say he is in talks to cooperate with the NRM. I do not know at what level. And he is doing so outside the framework of the party constitution. He is doing so outside the organs of the party. It is very clear where the heart of Mr Akena is.

Are you now admitting that with Museveni controlling some members of the Obote family, he now has an upper hand in UPC?
He does not have an upper hand. He is trying. I have talked to party leaders, I have talked to ordinary members of UPC and they are going to fight tooth and nail to make sure that UPC is not sold by Akena or any other person.

You know very well that President Museveni has a plan of wiping out the Opposition by 2021. And it seems that the soft target is UPC and UPC…
What I have seen in the countryside, the members and leaders of UPC are not ready to be wiped out and lets us wait for the national council meeting to give us directions. They will decide what the future of the party is going to be.

From what you know as UPC leaders, what is the motivation of Akena to work with a regime that was criticised by his father Milton Obote?
There is a saying that fire gives way to ashes. Obote was the fire and Akena is the ashes. These people are motivated by material things; they are motivated by power and to them that supersedes the legacy of their own biological father.

With Akena and his functionaries not ready to surrender their victory as you put it and you unwilling to give up, where will this end?
It will end up in the national council meeting. I have called the national council meeting and it will decide on the next course of action.

Is there an attempt by you or the Akena faction to resolve this stand-off amicably? Can this stand-off be resolved through dialogue?
There have been talks but there can’t be an amicable understanding because Akena is adamant that he is president of UPC. The only meeting that he wishes to happen is where he is declared party president. He is virtually saying, “Come and surrender. Surrender the leadership to me.” That is his understanding of an amicable settlement.

What is the status of the talks?
The Republican Institute gave us their facilities to convene talks. I met Akena with Ebil Ebil and Chris Opoka. On my side I was with Prof Edward Kakonge and Peter Walubiri. We thought we could begin there. But when Akena said he was not prepared to “surrender” his victory and that any meeting of the party organ that should be held should be to confirm him as party president, the talks broke off at that point.

How would you rate the six years of Olara Otunnu’s presidency?
One of the things that the leadership of UPC did was to make UPC respectable again. You would be amazed by the number of inter-party meetings [DP, Jeema and FDC] all converging in Uganda House under the leadership of UPC to forge a common stand, especially on free and fair elections. Leaders who had never stepped foot at Uganda House did so. We were the leading drafters of documents; we gave intellectual direction to political parties in this country.

There are people out there who are amazed by this fight in UPC, and yet the party did not even field a candidate at presidential level in the recent elections and performed quite poorly at parliamentary level. Is UPC beyond redemption?
The party is not beyond redemption, at least from what I have seen in the countryside. Mark you, in April 2015 we held a national council meeting which resolved that the party should cooperate with any other party, any other democracy-seeking individual and indeed when the last elections were held, there was TDA [The Democratic Alliance] which aimed at bringing Opposition parties together so as to field a joint presidential candidate and joint candidates at all levels.
It was within that spirit that we decided not to field a presidential candidate. When that [TDA] effort broke down, we decided to go with candidate Amama Mbabazi. Not fielding a candidate as indeed DP did not field a candidate was within that spirit to ensure that NRM is defeated.

What explains the poor performance at parliamentary and local government levels?
It was not as bad as you project it. There was complicity of Mr Akena and other forces. When you stand as a candidate of a political party, your papers must be endorsed by the party leadership. Otherwise, you are not a party candidate. They was fear among candidates that if they put in their papers as UPC candidates, the Akena group, working with the Electoral Commission, would not recognise them. So what they did was to stand as independents. Because when you stand as Independent, you do not need an endorsement from any political party.
Some of the MPs who are Independents are actually UPC and the voters knew. I will give you an example, Julius Ochen (MP Kapelebyong County, Amuria District). He is a UPC but he stood as an Independent. So the picture is not as bleak as it may appear. Besides, since we had agreed that we were going to field joint candidates, in areas where other parties were strong, we gave way to their candidates.

What is your assessment of the state of Opposition political parties in Uganda?
My assessment is that the traditional political parties are going through a difficult patch because politics in this country have been vulgarised. People do not join political parties because of ideology, they go for material benefits. This is what NRM has been doing. Look at the MPs, within a month of getting to Parliament they are just thinking of allowances. Politics is about self-aggrandisement, gaining material things and that is the problem. As for now, the party that is in the position of meeting the selfish needs of our people is the NRM, not because they are better organised, not because their members are devoted, but because they are using money obtained from taxpayers. It is impunity.
They are virtually buying support and because political parties in Opposition are not in position to buy support. When asking somebody to convene even a meeting, he will find it difficult because there is no money. The money factor has deformed our politics.

The soft blame for parties in Uganda is the regime, but can UPC blame the government for failure to nurture and groom leaders?
We must be clear that the way you run a party in power is not the way you run a party that is not in power. A party in power has jobs. People have to put food on the table. If you are in UPC and there is a danger that your child would not get a scholarship because of your party allegiance, you would be very brave to show your head as UPC. There have been young men who have sat job interviews in these government agencies and the moment they know that they are UPC, they are dropped. And I do not blame them.

Where do you see UPC in the next five years?
One of the most difficult things to predict is politics. It is very difficult. It was one British prime minister who said even a week in politics is a very long time. When you begin talking about five years, I call that an eternity.