It’s Mwiru vs Nabeta as Jinja market vendor joins race

Jinja.

Outside politics, Jinja Municipality East constituency is perhaps the most important part of this town being home of the central business district, the Industrial Area, the pier and the biggest fish landing sites.

So far, five people have lined up to fight for the parliamentary seat of an area that is also home to Jinja town’s main bus and taxi terminals and the Shs28b Jinja Central Market, which was reconstructed using the African Development Bank-funded Markets and Agricultural Trade Improvement Programme. The market was commissioned by President Museveni on November 17, 2014 and opened to vendors in February this year.

Those who have so far lined up for the battle are the NRM-leaning Agnes Atwoki and Cranmer Dhikusooka, DP candidate, Hellen Kwagala, former area MP, Nathan Igeme Nabeta, and the incumbent Paul Mwiru.

The 54-year-old Atwoki, who works as a senior public relations officer for National Water and Sewerage Corporation in charge of Eastern Uganda, previously wanted to contest for the workers’ MP slot but later made a surprising U-turn.

It is not clear what made her take the decision to join the murky waters of directly elected constituency politics, but the woman who holds a Master’s Degree in Business Administration from Ndejje University insists she is on a mission.

“People have been going to Parliament [since 1989] but the community of Jinja East, has not changed economically. but for me, I think I can make things happen through lobbying my friends and using the position of MP more productively,” she argues.

The businessman
Dhikusooka is a market vendor in Jinja Central Market. “My strength is in the business people whom I hope will vote me unreservedly. If I get to Parliament, I intend to lobby for a seed secondary school and the establishment of a blood bank in the constituency,” he says.

The Opposition Uganda Peoples Congress will again field Richard Osinde, who has on two past elections contested for the same seat, but garnered less than 500 votes each time.
Osinde, an unemployed former freelance journalist, declined to discuss either the thrust or strategy that will be guiding his campaign this time.

However, the main fight is expected to revolve around FDC’s Mwiru and Nabeta. The two will be squaring off for the fourth time, having first faced off in 2006.

The two protagonists faced off for the second time during the February 18, 2011 parliamentary elections. Nabeta carried the day with 8,203 votes against Mwiru’s 7,060 votes. Mwiru, however, challenged the outcome in court on grounds that Nabeta was not qualified for nomination as a candidate. He argued that his opponent’s certificate of completion of formal education of advanced level was not legally valid.

Though the High Court in Jinja initially threw out Mwiru’s appeal, in December 2011, the Court of Appeal overturned the election on grounds that Nabeta lacked minimum academic qualifications.

That paved way for the duo’s return to the political ring in February 2012 for round three. Despite intervention by President Museveni, the then NRM secretary general and prime minister, John Patrick Amama Mbabazi, over 10 cabinet ministers and more than 50 NRM MPs pitching camp in the constituency, Nabeta managed 7,700 votes, 523 less than what he had got less than a year before.

Defeat at the hands of Mwiru, who won the seat with 8,700 votes, 1,640 votes more than he previously got, left a bitter taste in the mouths of NRM supporters. This triggered a wave of bickering as they traded accusations of sabotage.

The cause of these fratricidal tensions could be traced back to the March 2011 mayoral race, which ended in defeat for the NRM candidate, Majid Batambuze, at the hands of the incumbent, Hajj Mohammed Baswari Kezaala, who is also the national chairman of the Democratic Party. Nabeta was accused of supporting Kezaala.

Nabeta goes silent
Nabeta did not honour several appointments for an interview, but it is believed that his supporters compelled him not to support Batambuze, who had only crossed from the Opposition FDC to the NRM a few months to the general election.

“We were not comfortable with Batambuze standing on an NRM ticket and expressed this concern, but Richard Gulume insisted that he should be accepted since he had now been Born-Again.
“We asked whether a new convert could be elevated to the level of a pastor, but he just laughed us off,” said an NRM supporter close to both Gulume and Nabeta.

Kezaala and Nabeta belong to different sides of the political divide, but they are known to be sympathetic to one another’s causes. Politics in Jinja since the individual merit days have, after all, been shaped more by personal and business relationships than by political affiliations.

Besides, the issue of suspect academic qualifications, while workers at his radio stations, NBS FM and Smart FM, and Kodheyo Television, have previously been viewed as major mobilisers, especially after they created what is locally known as the Baise Igeme (Igeme’s Clan) around, which they used to rally support for him, they are believed to have lately become overbearing.

“I think some of them are becoming too pushy in their bid to see him re-elected. They annoy people and that might have a negative effect,” Reuben Masumbuko, a resident of Walukuba told Saturday Monitor.

The biggest challenge though is for Nabeta to reassure people that he and the President did not promise them hot air in December 2010 during the commissioning of work on the $500m Lake Victoria Information and Technology in Kirinya.

Nabeta had promised that the project, which was meant to see a Business Processing Outsourcing Centre and a university built, would create 3,000 jobs in the short-run and 30,000 in the long-run. It has, however, never taken off.

While it is likely to be a hard ride for Nabeta, Mwiru might not have it easy either. During his time in Parliament, he has risen to become the vice chairperson of the Public Accounts Committee, earning kudos from even those in the NRM for a good job done.

“The constituents of Jinja East did not make a loss to vote MP Mwiru because he is an excellent performer, but only in the wrong party of FDC,” said the Minister of Water and Environment, Prof Ephraim Kamuntu, while speaking in Jinja on June 15.

Sections of the electorate are, however, uneasy that he spends a lot more time in the committee rooms and corridors of power. Others also accuse him of stinginess.

The promises
“Our politics should be changing from that of hand-outs to being issue driven. I personally fear deceiving people that is why I make very few pledges during my campaigns and whatever I promised, I have managed to fulfill. That is my principle and I will continue with it even in this coming campaign,” he said.

It is, however, important to note that if it was by the sword of the enemy within that Nabeta fell in the February 2012 by-election, it is by the same sword that Mwiru might fall in 2016.

Though it is difficult to establish the source of tensions within the FDC hierarchy in Jinja, it is an open secret that Mwiru is at odds with some of the local party officials, including the district chairman Abubaker Maganda.

Secondly, the internal democratic practices of his party are now threatening to destroy Mwiru. Sections of the “Maluku group”, a collection of mostly people from the Mountain Elgon region, some of whom are supporters of NRM, who voted Mwiru in 2012, revealed that they had done so because they had been convinced by the FDC’s current secretary general Nathan Nandala Mafabi.

They were, however, shocked to see Mwiru campaign against Nandala during the FDC elections to replace Dr Kizza Besigye as party leader, which Maj Gen Mugisha Muntu won.
“It was because of Mafabi that we voted him, but he turned against him. He should have kept quiet,” one of the members said.

This feeling is also evident among FDC members who supported Dr Besigye during the recently concluded race for the flag bearer’s position.
Watchers now wait to see how Mwiru will placate this wing.