Opposition telling lies on land amendment –Museveni

President Museveni over the weekend used his two-day visit to Teso Sub region to criticise Opposition as a useless group of people bent on harvesting from the ‘garden they hardly sowed and telling lies that have influenced public perception on the proposed land bill by government.
Addressing two separate occasions in Soroti and Serere respectively before closing the visit with a radio talk-show on Sunday night, Mr Museveni challenged anyone to show the public two acres of land he or his government grabbed from any citizen.

Citing the former Serere woman MP Alice Alaso and former External Security Organisation (ESO) boss David Pulkol as examples, the president told the people of Serere that the two told lies and fought his disarmament campaign by liasing with “foreign enemies to frustrate the programme.
"We ignored those and the guns must come out of Karamoja. They contributed nothing. We did what we did despite their lies,” he said.

According to him, the two spiritedly tried to discredit the disarmament exercise on grounds that unless the Turkana of Kenya, Somalia and some section of Ethiopians who are armed are not disarmed, the exercise wouldn't succeed.
"I said no. I am not responsible for Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia. Today, the entire Karamoja Sub region is in peace," he added.

The president hardly said anything on the chaotic scenes witnessed in Parliament last week as legislators opposed to the removal of term limit were being ejected.
Mr Museveni also blamed the office of the presidency in charge RDCs and the NRM secretariat for allowing Opposition propagate lies on radio stations in the region.

"There is a big gap between the office of presidency in charge RDCs and NRM secretariat which must be corrected," he reiterated, on Sunday afternoon while gracing the victory party for the Serere NRM woman MP Hellen Adoa and Patrick Okabe at Serere District headquarters.

Appearing on the state owned radio Etop FM on Sunday night, the President said his NRM government in 1995 granted land rights to the people of Uganda, making Uganda the only government in the region where land is in the hands of the citizens.

"We are not out to grab land. The land we need is for road opening," he said, adding that people should avoid propagators of lies, whom he termed as prophets of doom.
The president also praised Serere people for electing NRM for the first time. He said he was happy to be in the region to celebrate the liberation of Serere from the Opposition.