Obongi: MP Fungaroo under siege

Constituency to watch: Obongi (Moyo District)

Current MP: Hassan Kaps Fungaroo (FDC)
Contestants: Pataki Amasi, Gregory Drale, Stephen Dima (all NRM)

He burst into national elective politics as a minnow. However, a mix of an opposition ‘tsunami’ aided by real or perceived failings of the incumbent in 2006 birthed Hassan Kaps Fungaroo as Member of Parliament for Obongi constituency in Moyo, one of the 17 districts of Uganda at independence.

Mr Fungaroo, 32, defeated an avid supporter of the ruling NRM party, Pataki Amasi, who had represented the rural constituency in Parliament for a decade. Mr Amasi is planning a re-bound.

Like many colleagues from northern Uganda, voters may have overwhelmingly ticked Mr Fungaroo because his image on the ballot paper was etched besides the figure of a key, the symbol of the opposition Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) party.

The greater north has churned out three Presidents – Milton Obote, Idi Amin and Tito Okello Lutwa – but sections of the population believe they lost opportunities when the men were violently ousted. Successor regimes were often perceived as seeking revenge, leaving residents indignant.

However, in the past five years, certain crucial campaign variables have shifted and the political contour re-configured, if not complicated. For instance, the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) war that devastated the region and made the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) party unpopular is virtually over.

Most IDP camps have been dismantled; the majority of the displaced persons are back home and busy opening up gardens and harvesting big from near-virgin soils.

The new fortune is making greater north more hopeful after decades of despair. Area politicians who rose to fame by criticising, maybe even demonising, President Museveni’s government based on the atrocities of the LRA war appear disarmed by the military victory over the insurgents.

With the insurgency behind, individual politicians in the region will most likely win or lose the 2011 ballot on individual merit or the charm of their local development blueprint – a drift from expired dividend of rhetoric and party affiliation.

Although the primary role of an MP is to legislate, voters expect them to deliver more; lobby government, private sector partners and international friends to support development projects.

Electoral demands
In Obongi, which is roughly 65 kilometres from Moyo District headquarters, residents’ overarching desire is to get a leader who can persuade the government to grant the constituency of an estimated 130, 000 people, district status.

“The people of Obongi are very desperate for a district because they want services brought nearer to them,” says Mr Ssebi Idraku, the LC I chairman of Obongi Town East cell.
“When civil servants from Moyo District headquarters are transferred here, they take it as punishment because of the hardships in Obongi. ”

The lamentations by the local council official, an NRM supporter, mirrors the frustrations of most residents over government’s failure to offer basic services.

The constituency has no electricity; no tarmac road, posts human development indicators worse than the national averages and suffers perennial outbreak of epidemics, particularly cholera and cryptococcal meningitis.

Most educational institutions in the area are collapsing following withdrawal of UNHCR assistance in the wake of the repatriation of thousands of Sudanese refugees, then majority students in the area.

Obongi SS, the only government secondary school in the constituency, had no O-level student passing in Division One or Two in the Uganda Certificate of Education examinations results released last week, Mr Mike Otte, the head teacher, said.

But not all hope is lost. A newly-built government health centre IV in the area with a resident doctor has enabled minor surgery procedures to be carried from within.

MP Fungaroo speaks of lobbying for piped water supply, which is now flowing in the trading centre, as well as the ongoing upgrading of the jagged Obongi-Moyo Town road to standard gravel compaction, at Shs4 billion.

Improvement work on the Obongi-Kulikulinga Road connecting to Yumbe District is due to start and residents want a new road opened to link the constituency via Rhino Camp to Pakwach Town in Nebbi District and onwards to Kampala. If done, experts say time to ply the current estimated 285-kilometre Obongi to Pakwach stretch via Yumbe, Koboko and Arua districts would be cut by half.