Don't re-elect Katuntu- Museveni

Bugweri County MP Abdu Katuntu. Photo by Geoffrey Sseruyange

What you need to know:

Work with me. The President has asked Bugweri voters to elect someone he can work with.

Iganga- President Museveni has warned voters in Bugweri County against reelecting the incumbent legislator Abdu Katuntu in the 2016 polls.

Mr Museveni said MP Katuntu, a Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) diehard, has been a source of suffering to the people of Bugweri who are still yarning for health facilities.

‘’You have complained of lack of a health centre in this area but you are to blame because you sent me a representative who does not reach my office to demand for it since he is in Opposition and he has created this suffering to you,” Mr Museveni said.

He added: “However, let the district authorities team up with Mr Kirunda Kivejinja to push for either a health centre III or IV. I will instruct the Ministry of Health to follow it up.”
Mr Museveni made the remarks at Idudi Muslim Primary School in Buyanga Sub-county on Thursday where he was receiving 600 people who were introduced as FDC defectors. It was said the former Third Deputy prime minister Kivejinja convinced them to join the ruling NRM.

The defectors led by Mr Dan Babaland said they crossed to the NRM party due to lack of benefits in FDC for the 15 years they have been supporting it. They did not specify what kind of benefits they had anticipated.

Mr Museveni said the people of Bugweri County are likely to continue missing out on vital services and government programmes if they do not elect a person who is close to him.

He explained that although he is supposed to balance development in all parts of the country as President, at times he forgets small projects and concentrates on bigger ones like roads “if there is no body close to remind me.”

He advised the constituents to elect Mr Kivejinja in the forthcoming polls.

However, FDC members in Bugweri led by the Ibulanku Sub-county chairperson, Mr Ayoub Kyozira, said they are not threatened by the President’s remarks. He vowed that FDC will again defeat NRM in the constituency as it has been in the past.