DP bloc starts “fumigation” campaign today

The Democratic Party leaders have started what they termed as fumigation of “cockroaches” and “snakes” in the party.
The DP president Mr Norbert Mao told Daily Monitor on Thursday that the exercise will cover the whole country starting with the eight constituencies in Kampala. According to Mao, the “fumigation” exercise will start from Rubaga Division where DP is dominant, on Friday.

“We are going to roll out from the branch level the massive registration of members of the party and the purpose of this exercise under the office of the organizing secretary, is to create a members register with only DP believers,” he said.
Kampala constituencies include: Lugaba South and North, Kawempe South and North, Makindye, West and East, Kampala Central and Nakawa Division.

Mr Mao said democracy is about freedom of choice and that citizens should be free to choose where they belong, saying that right now they have many people who are in DP boat, but are not rowing.
“We have some people in our DP boat who are supposed to be rowing but instead they are busy rocking the boat, we think those people should find a different boat where they feel comfortable,” he said.

Mr Mao added that they do not have any ill will against anybody. He said the party has a lot of people in whose approach to politics, methods of work and attitude are completely negative and are doing a lot of harm to the party.
“We want a DP which has members who believe in it and we want to have true believers to remain in the party,” he said. However, he didn’t explain how the “fumigation” is going to kick out cockroaches and snakes from the party.
Mr Mao said DP is not the only party reorganising its house, adding that the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) has done it more efficiently than any other party.

“We are actually learning it from FDC, to make sure those who call themselves DP are truly DP not pretenders or hypocrites. Some of the problems we have in political field is that parties do not know who their supporters and members are, sometimes supporters are confused of being members,” he said.
According to him, part of their proposal as coalition bloc is that there should be a lead party in targeted sub region and DP believes in regional vote targeting.

“We believe we should do some kind of division of labour to minimize resource allocation. As DP bloc we believe we can lead the efforts of bringing about change in central region, it’s very critical because 80 per cent of DP active members are in central region and you can tell by the shape of the party top leadership out of 11 top leaders, eight members come from central region.

Mr Mao however said doors are still open for errant members like Betty Nambooze and Erias Lukwago who have openly disagreed with the DP leadership in many occasions.
He said they will continue with reconciliation process, spreading the message and working through their elders.
“Many of our elders are talking to errant members of DP but these are not lost sheep, if they are lost sheep we would be going out looking for them but they are conjugal sons and daughters, they know the way home and we expect them to have a change of heart and they come back home,” he said.

DP started reconciliation process last year in May with a launch dubbed DP-UYD reunion at Makerere playground. Since then, they have been traversing the country to make sure that by 2021 elections all the errant members are back and ready to take over the ruling government.

Registration process
The constitution of DP requires that anybody who wants to become a DP member applies to an authorized official, with an application form signed by that very members.
The process usually takes place at branches of districts and constituency levels and sub- branches at sub counties, parish and villages level, membership fee is Shs2000 annually.

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