Inside Akena ‘coup’ at Uganda House

Mr Jimmy Akena is carried by UPC party supporters after he was sworn in as party president on Wednesday. PHOTO BY RACHEL MABALA

What you need to know:

Palace coup? The events that unfolded at Uganda Manufacturers’ Association Show Grounds in Kampala on Wednesday in the words of outgoing vice president Joseph Bossa were nothing short of “deception and comedy,” writes Ivan Okuda.

On Thursday, Daily Monitor carried a high-pitched headline: “Tragic Wednesday” accompanied by an emotive pictorial. On the left was Sheikh Hassan Kirya who joins a list of 11 Muslim clerics gunned down in the country by assailants. On the right was a photograph relaying road carnage on Masaka Road and above it, a supporter of three-time presidential candidate Kizza Besigye struggling for a second chance at life after he was shot at by a trigger-happy police officer.
Uganda Peoples Congress (UPC) was in the pictorial of this ‘Tragic Wednesday’ edition. The difference with the other macabre photos was the smiling Jimmy Akena, son to former two-time president Milton Obote, lifted shoulder-high by fans after swearing in. The photos of men and women clad in red and blue attire could as well still be within the range of this week’s ‘Tragic Wednesday’. Why?

The events that unfolded at Uganda Manufacturers’ Association (UMA) Show Grounds in Kampala on Wednesday in the words of outgoing vice president Joseph Bossa were nothing short of “deception and comedy”. They, perhaps, could mark the turning point of one of Uganda’s oldest parties which outgoing party president Olara Otunnu has time and again claimed has been deeply infiltrated by the ruling National Resistance Movement.

But what exactly happened?
On June 25, Mr Akena, signing off as president elect, called members of the party’s delegates conference for what he called a consultative meeting. Painting a vivid background of the election in which he tussled eight other contenders to scoop 67 districts, several bars above the 37 mark set by the party constitution for one to qualify for election by the delegates conference, he wrote, “Since then a lot of controversy and attempts have been made by the outgoing party president to try and nullify this overwhelming win.”
The meeting was therefore called to resolve the concerns of jittery party members. Among others, the meeting was to pick the members’ brains on the indefinite postponement of the delegates’ conference which was due on July 10 and the future of the party in participating in the national elections.

Article 13(3) of the UPC constitution mandates the president (not president-elect) to call the delegates conference at least twice in five years by giving a one month notice with a clear date, agenda and venue. He is also given leg room to summon an extra ordinary meeting of the delegates conference as he deems fit by giving a seven day notice.
But this ‘president elect’s’ victory is a matter of adjudication before High Court. On July 17 Joseph Bbosa, Edward Kakonge and Isha Amiza Otto sued the party moving court to quash the declaration of Akena as president elect and an order of prohibition restraining him from parading himself as the UPC president and another order for a fresh election.

Before this case was lodged in court, Otunnu had instituted an elections review board amid protests from some of the candidates who disagreed on its terms of reference, reporting lines and the spirit of the same. The former United Nations high profile diplomat, they argued, wanted to deny Akena his controversial victory, manipulate the process and have Bossa or Kakonge, his preferred choice take charge of the party, claims he downplayed, insisting he was only ensuring a fraudulent election doesn’t triumph.

The UMA meeting that attracted at least 500 members was blind to the court case and the inquiry.
Intriguingly throughout the event, only a fringe section of the crowd kept chorusing to the day’s pre-written script of events. The other chunk was cold. Those who attempted to dissent were man handled out of the hall with police officers aiding or simply looking on. The line-up of speakers also spoke volumes. First to speak was Akena who scoffed at Otunnu, “There are people saying there were no elections on May 30. Others are saying it was not a UPC exercise but for NRM and Museveni. Is there anybody here among you who is pretending to be UPC?”

Anti-Otunnu slogans
Then David Baliraine spewed anti-Otunnu slogans followed by Sospater Akwenyu who in a typed speech mentioned Otunnu almost in every five words. Patrick Mwondha, another elder, spoke briefly, before announcing that he was handing over Akena to the delegates for approval.
Edward Sseganye, a member of the party’s EC, later officially announced Akena as winner of the district conference election and handed him over to the delegates for approval as party president. His chairman Andrew Buzu, however, distanced himself from the election.
Patrick Aroma, speaking as staff of the party, also gave accountability of monies received by the party, essentially accusing the Otunnu administration of raiding the party coffers albeit with no evidence.

Newspaper photocopies of articles on the feud at Uganda House with Shs4b in question were also circulated, but Otunnu has no hand in the running of Uganda House, the party’s business wing.
And then you had Chris Opoka, the East African Legislative Assembly MP, taking to the high table to preside over a motion moved by Higenyi Kemba, a delegate from Bunyole East, asking the members to constitute themselves into a delegates’ conference and elect Akena president and swear him in.

Noticing that the delegates’ conference was out of order with the party rules, Opoka cited Article 1 of the national Constitution which states that power belongs to the people. And stopped there. He did not continue with the other bit of the Article which enjoins Ugandans to exercise that power in accordance with the Constitution, which among others, commands parties to exercise internal democracy. He summarily conducted an election in which 479 of the delegates voted Akena.
Mr Kiyemba Mutale, a lawyer and commissioner of oaths who was hastily called in, dashed into the hall and drafted a handwritten oath, which he administered to Akena as melodious UPC songs played. Mr Akena would later hand over power to himself with a symbolic handshake from members who lifted him shoulder high as he waved the open palm.

UPC elder Dr James Rwanyarare told this reporter in an interview that Mr Otunnu had invited him to be part of the reconciliation committee after the contested election. Rwanyarare, who stepped down from active politics in 2006 having notified Dr Obote he was retiring from public office at 70 in 2005 says: “I was ready to be part of the reconciliation team. We need to talk to those young boys and girls, but the next I saw in the press was a committee to punish people over the election and then court.”
“I don’t like that; even court won’t help matters as they stand. We need dialogue otherwise the party can split up.”

Could UPC be headed for doomsday?
Rwanyarare is confident this, as the family lawyer would call it, is the normal wear and tear of marriage. “I was part of the Uganda National Congress which later became UPC and trust me UPC will stay. We have had these problems since UNC days and UPC will always be there.”
By their very nature parties are boiling pots of differences. But is UPC mutating into a failed party?
Sources in the know of the inner workings of UPC told this reporter on condition of anonymity, that Ms Betty Amongi “is the de facto UPC president now. She runs Akena and is the link between Akena and State House”. Ms Amongi laughs of the assertion as mere propaganda by detractors.

Political commentator Charles Rwomushana says, “Why is he in a hurry if he legitimately won the election? Why not wait for the grievances of the aggrieved to be settled?”
Mr David Pulkol who was the first to congratulate Akena on his victory and mulled over Pul-Kena, a loose alliance between the ‘bad boys’ as Otunnu saw them in UPC, now reconsiders his support and accuses the former first son of staging a coup d’état and taking charge of the party with police.

Makerere University political science don Sabiti Makara predicts Mr Akena is headed for a tough time leading a party with serious factionalism.
“Attracting the youth to such a party is impossible. He needs to get talking with the rest otherwise he will crumble with the party,” Mr Makara says.
Whether Akena is a Museveni mercenary or not, and how far he can take the party is for time to tell. Ours is to watch.