Akena closes in on UPC top seat

Kampala-Dramatic. Those were the scenes at Uganda House, for the better part of yesterday, as the Uganda Peoples Congress (UPC) tallied its presidential elections results.

With riot police ringing off the party headquarters, Lira Municipality MP Jimmy Akena was finally announced as the presumptive leader of one of Uganda’s oldest political organisations.

Sounding happy, the son of UPC’s founding leader and two-time former Ugandan president, Dr Apollo Milton Obote, told this newspaper in an interview, “It is really a victory of the members who want the party to be rebuilt from the grassroots and strengthen it basing on principles that made it strong. That is the task I am going to embark on.”

The 47-year-old Mr Akena was endorsed by 67 districts as the party’s next president, a development that makes him the unopposed choice to succeed outgoing president Olara Otunnu who declined to seek re-election, come July 10 when the party’s National Delegates’ Conference meets at Nambole Stadium.

Under Article 13.2(5) of the UPC constitution, the party president is, “elected from candidates approved by majority vote of at least a third of all district conferences.” This means that a candidate needs endorsement from at least 37 districts.

Last Saturday, the district conferences conducted elections whose results were collated last Sunday and were set to be announced yesterday at noon but by 5pm, a cloud of uncertainty and acrimony hovered over the 6th floor of Uganda House.

Members of Mr Akena’s support group could be heard saying party election officials may have been attempting to manipulate results.

Oyam South MP Betty Amongi also Mr Akena’s spouse, clad in party colours with a campaign poster of Mr Akena on her chest joined a shouting march, heckling the election officials, “Why don’t you announce Akena as the winner? He has clearly won and is unopposed. Why do you condemn Kiggundu (Uganda’s Electoral Commission boss) and do the same things we accuse him of?”

“Mr Akena was endorsed by 67 districts, David Pulkol 12, Joseph Bbosa 11. Mubende District did not raise quorum while in Kiryandongo District there were no clear party structures,” the chairman of the party’s electoral commission, Mr John Buzu said.

When Mr Buzu finally came round to making the announcement, he was roundly booed by Mr Akena’s supporters for delaying the announcement.

Mr Okello Lucima, who has been the party spokesman and a known insider under Mr Otunnu’s leadership, was locked out of the proceedings and paced around the corridors. Asked for a comment, he said, “I have no comment. The commissioners are there. I speak what they give me.”

Mr Akena has been the subject of scathing attacks from especially the outgoing president who accused him, alongside the first runner-up, former External Security Organisation (ESO) director general, Mr Pulkol, of being President Museveni’s functionaries working to kill the party from within.

Efforts to get a comment from the outgoing UPC leader ended in failure as he neither answered calls nor responded to text messages.
Mr James Rwanyarare, a UPC historical, yesterday told Daily Monitor: “He has my blessings. He is a young man who has grown up in the systems of power and political activism of the father so I think he has to prove himself. I have hope in him. I have always advocated for young people taking over.”

Responding to critics of the Obote family’s grip on UPC, Mr Rwanyarare said, “I believe that once a child becomes an adult he has to prove himself. Mr Akena has his own virtues, that is why he was elected as MP after the father departed us. He didn’t ride on his father’s name alone. He has to prove he is made of the father’s substance.”

Asked where this leaves his MP seat as the party constitution dictates that the president of the party is fronted as the flag bearer for the national general election, Mr Akena said, “That is a matter we shall put before the delegates conference.”

Late nomitation
Mr Jimmy Akena was nominated only two weeks to the election after what Mr Otunnu said was “wide consultations”.

The Lira Municipality MP had applied on May 12, to be given special consideration, having missed the April 17, deadline for picking nomination forms. His climb to the party’s highest office comes just five years after he failed to make a mark in 2010.

Then, he lost a bitterly fought contest to Mr Otunnu, a former UN under-secretary general who was returning to Uganda after years in exile. His win may well raise questions about the Obote family’s hold over UPC, Mr Akena’s mother, Ms Miria Obote, having picked the mantle after her husband passed away in October 2005.

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