I cannot be compromised by NRM, says Oguttu

It was reported that you first turned down the appointment. If that was so, what were you scared of and then what happened that changed your heart?
I wasn’t scared of anything. It was not about me, it was about my party FDC. I thought it would cause more problems for the party, not because they were appointing me but because they were shifting Mr Nandala to serve in another capacity. We had just settled the acrimony that was due to the fallout after the election of 2012.
I told the party president that I did not think it was the right decision he had taken not to continue with Nathan as the LOP. But eventually, many party leaders talked to me about it and I saw their reason. I accepted, now I am here, whole- heartedly.

It appears you were in self denial?
It was not self-denial. I don’t fight for positions. There had been a lot of lobbying among my colleagues, particularly senior colleagues who think they should be leading us in Parliament. So when it was offered to me, I was a bit surprised.

Here is a man who you openly campaigned against for FDC leadership (in favour of Nandala Mafabi). The same man has appointed you LoP, a position some people think should be theirs. Were you not shocked by Muntu’s humility?
In FDC we have competition and this has been championed largely by Gen Muntu. He shocked us in 2005 when he said he was going to stand against Dr Besigye. Dr Besigye had just come from South Africa. He was loved and Gen Muntu came out and said ‘I am going to stand against him so that he gets used to the fact that there is competition’ and that has been enshrined in our practices.
So when I did not agree with Gen Muntu, it was a natural thing. It does not cause enmity. That is the competition.

But you have just said in this show that some of your colleagues think naturally they should have been LoP. Is that normal?
Gen Muntu had reasons why he chose me. Though he did not give reasons why he did not want to continue with Nathan. You must appreciate that I have been working with Muntu for eight years. We know each other. My colleagues who encouraged me to take up this job know me too. I may not be a veteran in Parliament but I know my way around the corridors of politics and how to work with people.

Some people think you are a man of modest personality, you could easily be compromised in the name of trying to bridge the gap?
For those who do not know Wafula, they can think of compromise. I am a man who believes in principle. If I believe something is wrong, I won’t delay on it but also when I believe something, is right, I pursue it. If it comes to FDC matters I can’t be compromised. In my role in Parliament, I will try to build a team to work together. There is no way I can succumb to compromise from the NRM. I have known the President since 1977. He too knows me. He used to call me when I was at the Monitor, we used to have conversations at his home. One day, he offered me a glass of milk himself, and I have never been compromised by him.

Doesn’t the fact that the President is your friend, make those who support you skeptical?
He is a dictator but he is not my enemy as a person. I am sure if he died I would go to bury him. If I died, and he has time he would bury me too. We have known each other but we do not agree politically. I supported him until 2001. Then I got so angry, I felt betrayed when he changed and went into the third term thing, then changed the Constitution. Since that time I feel he is not the right leader.
I did so much work when he came from the bush, I did a programme called rebuilding Uganda on UTV for two years to help NRM get established. I also took NRM to eastern Uganda, Busia, Busoga, sold Museveni there. But I differed with him and I differ with him and his style of management.

As the leader of opposition, you will have an opulent sort of lifestyle. You are going to have this huge monster car, fancy office with men in uniform around you. Won’t you live a lavish lifestyle?

The car of the LoP is worse than the one I am driving which is my own. There is a car and policemen…. You don’t have to have policemen, and a car is no big deal. The opulence I am talking about is the lifestyle the President now lives.
I remember when I was at the Weekly Topic, I went to the State House to see the President. He was taking tea in a TUMPECO cup. I came to the newsroom in Katwe and told people, we have found a man, he is a simple man.
During his swearing in, he reprimanded Tito Okello Lutwa for having ordered chairs worth half a million dollars from Europe when there are chairs in Kawempe. Today, the President imports everything. What he does not import is food because he eats Ankole food. That is opulence.

What do you bring on the table?
I bring experience in managing people. At one time, they did not accept Latigo (Ogenga, former LOP). Some of them didn’t accept Nathan. Fortunately, I come when everybody apart from one person who expresses disappointment, are saying willing to support me. I do not want to spoil that blank cheque.

As a LoP you go beyond FDC and bring in other parties as well. You are up against NRM that has state machinery, it would require a united front but that is rare in the opposition.
Is there cohesion in the NRM, the NRM is just Museveni. There are differences in FDC, DP, UPC and in Parliament. There have also been differences between FDC and DP, FDC and UPC but whenever situation has demanded, we have worked together. When the deputy Speaker Jacob Oulanyah behaved the way he did towards our friends, Ssemuju (Ibrahim), and Otto (Odonga) , we all assembled in the LoP office.

There are people who think that since Dr Besigye stepped out of FDC presidency, the party has weakened.
It is difficult to answer because when Dr Besigye left, we had a fallout and we have spent one year trying to bridge the gap created by the elections. Therefore, we have not been going out there as a team; if you ask me that question a year from now, I will give you a different answer.

But you are going to be given a bloody nose from the NRM because you have spent one year fighting yourselves. When 2016 comes, you will have yourselves to blame.
FDC in particular is not competing against a party like NRM, it is competing against a state. LCI officials receive bicycles and each paid 10,000 per month. That is not a party unit, it’s a state unit, up to the district. Museveni has fused the state with NRM.

Are you doing enough to disentangle yourself from that kind of fusion? You need to triple your efforts but you do not seem to be doing that.
I do that every weekend in Bukholi. Others do it but using limited resources. Since 2010, FDC has not accessed any foreign funding. Somehow the government stopped all these donors from funding us.
Locally here, if they ever knew that you gave me Shs200,000 for FDC, you may get a problem from the intelligence or even with your employer.
We don’t have multiparty democracy in Uganda. Otherwise, the President would not be putting all this rules which make it hard for us to work. Some of the divisions in parties are engineered by NRM, by the state. Then they have driven everybody into poverty, Wafula cannot get a job, he can’t apply and get a job because he is FDC. Wafula’s child cannot get a job if they know he is my child, they want to make the opposition destitute then come to throw money at you. If you have a loan, they push the bank to harass you.

Opposition MPs have hardly tabled any private member’s Bill, there is little research your team presents on the floor. There used to be vibrant opposition in Parliament which is not there today.
We have not done well on that, there have been a few of us. I think Nathan has been the best in doing research because he had researchers. We should do a lot of research before we go to talk, particularly on figures and facts.
But how many researchers do we have? In modern democracy in other countries, every MP has access to a researcher but the whole of Parliament has about 40 researchers serving 400 MPs. They can hardly do research for you. May be if the i pad (distributed to MPs by Parliament) thing picks up and the information is there. I can see we are going to have some more quality debates.

If MPs cannot carry out research using other methods, Google is not going to give you anything that adds value to life just because you have the i pad.
It does because you are going to access information from government, ministries, hospitals, etc. Then you can use that information to quote, you can access information from Kenya, Rwanda and compare.

You in the opposition seem to have been overtaken by members of NRM who have been labelled renegades, like Theodore Ssekikubo yet you are supposed to be the real voice of the opposition
It was strategic. We think we should reach out to people in the NRM who think like us, who care about Uganda and are not corrupt and we shall continue to do that. We thought that since in Parliament the NRM members will not listen to us even when we have good arguments, that maybe if we get our friends from NRM to take the lead, the NRM would listen. NRM people think that when you are in the opposition you are less intelligent, you are less patriotic, you have no correct ideas. It is silly. They don’t listen and because they are the majority, some of them just sleep as we are debating.

So who is to blame for the image you have portrayed to the public?
It’s not the image we have portrayed. It is just that the NRM think that way. That is why we don’t have multiparty and we don’t have a Parliament. Parliament is an appendage of the NRM. If your government is taking a wrong decision in the interest of the country, you should sit down, listen to what the others are saying.

On what ground would you work with the NRM?
If they increase the budget of agriculture to 15 per cent we would all just support and if they increase money for HIV/Aids, none of us would oppose. Those who elected me want seeds, there are also people suffering from HIV/Aids, they want treatment. But if you bring a Bill that you want more money for patriotic classes, we will oppose it because we think it is silly. You don’t teach people patriotism in class, people love their country by seeing what the country does for them.

So where are the Bills introduced by members of the opposition that are geared at building this country?
We are working on Electoral Reforms Bill, Local Government Bill and changes in the Constitution… it is also hard to have a private Bill passed, especially when it is coming from the opposition.
When we began on the 9th Parliament, which is my first Parliament, I thought we did very well. Some mistakes were made, we were excited, some information which has now proved to have been false were used. But the President or the NRM realised that this Parliament is becoming wild, it is occupying a lot of space in politics and he began curtailing Parliament. He calls MPs at night, calls everybody if he doesn’t want something and they are scared of him. They are aware in every election about 70 per cent of NRM MPs do not come back. They are scared he will sponsor some people against them.

What kind of shadow cabinet are we expecting to see from you.
A team which is going to work together and it is going to have FDC, UPC, DP, Independents, JEEMA, CP. All the six opposition parties will be represented in the shadow cabinet.

Besigye, who as I said earlier, is a big name in the politics of Uganda recently said Museveni cannot be removed through the ballots. Do you also hold that view?
Yes and no. Yes because from experience we can know where Museveni is coming from. The latest revelation by Gen David Sejusa should confirm that. The President has been campaigning for the last two years. He is in the villages campaigning for 2016 while we are not campaigning because we have no resources.
We are also not allowed to campaign in Kampala, even Erias Lukwago (embattled Kampala lord mayor), who was elected in Kampala cannot campaign in Kampala. Museveni has set up teams in villages called citizen verification committees to identify who should be registered. LCs are NRM, he has set up parish intelligence officers who are all NRM.
So he is setting ground for winning election and he has access to money. You hear the police, army, all talking like they are members of the NRM. However, governments that behave like that are defeated eventually. Former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak won by 92 per cent just a year before he was toppled.