Besigye bans money for FDC polling agents

Dr Besigye campaigns in Jinja

The Forum for Democratic Change presidential candidate Dr Kizza Besigye has said the overwhelming support he experienced countrywide during his campaign trail has left no doubt that Ugandans want change in the country’s leadership.

"The entire country is now united (in the demand for change). Those who supported us and those who opposed us now say 'enough is enough' [and] whatever has not been done in the 30 years (of President Museveni's rule) will never be done,” Besigye told a mammoth rally in Jinja town on Friday.

He called on the people to join his Power 10 network, which he says is a task force for protecting his votes on polling day.

He said task force members who will protect the FDC votes will not be paid allowances on Election Day as had been the practice in the past elections.

Dr Besigye said a number of agents who they had paid some allowances in the past elections abandoned their duties after being offered more money by their competitors and allowed rigging to take place.

"I decided in this election that none of our agents will be given any money," Dr Besigye said, "We want agents who will be in position to reject even Shs 1m as bribes," he said.

Dr Besigye called on the party's agents to sacrifice, invoking his own experience. "I was a trained doctor myself working in big hospitals in Nairobi (but) I came to the bush and we were there for five years. Was anyone paying us?"

Dr Besigye has tagged his campaign as a "liberation struggle", which he says aims at enabling Ugandans to achieve the first ever peaceful transfer of power by "defeating guns without using guns."

Jinja, where he addressed a huge rally on Friday evening was the last district he was visiting in this campaign, having traversed the rest of the country.
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