Anti-Gay law: It is foolish for us to face off with the West– Ogenga Latigo

There is a split and chaos at the FDC. What exactly is at the heart of the problem?
First, the spilt is not yet there. But the conflict, which is virtually irreconcilable, means some people will have to be pushed out of FDC in bitterness.

Some of us left without bitterness. I had to leave because I saw it coming earlier and I exited.

Why do I say that? Because party president at the start, Dr (Kizza) Besigye, did not lead the party with honesty.  
As a Leader of Opposition (in Parliament, or LoP) for five years, Dr Besigye never came to my office or even my home. He never invited me to his home, we never had a one-on-one meeting. Never. But right from the time I became LoP, the fight and threats against me started, but I was clear-headed and I could see and counter such threats.

When we launched the Shadow Cabinet in Parliament, I was in the Parliamentary Commission. Me and [now NRM spokesperson Emmanuel] Dombo went on television and talked about the facilitation of Members of Parliament. The vehicle facilitation at the time was Shs35 million. When we were opening party branches, I would carry at least six people in my car, including MPs because we didn’t have transport. So on the basis of that, I kept quiet. 

Remember the supposed review of 2008? It was an attempt to remove me. They made my brother Reagan [Okumu] to contest against me, but again I defeated them in the votes. The (NRM) government also made sure I did not return to Parliament in 2011. At that time the person who was very close to Dr Besigye was [FDC secretary general] Nandala Mafabi.

When (former FDC president Gen Mugisha) Muntu decided to contest against Besigye, he came to my house and I told Muntu to let Besigye finish his second term, and that I would support him. 

I supported Besigye to complete his second term, after that they made sure functionally my stay in FDC party was untenable. So I quietly receded.

You know, when you lose a child, you mourn and reach a time when you accept the loss and move on. Some of us don’t want to waste time, and at least for me, I don’t want to waste time on the FDC party.  I have moved on with my quiet life of retirement.

What exactly would you diagnose FDC’s problem to be?
The problem at FDC is that they operating dishonestly. I was the only LoP elected as the law requires. The law requires that the majority of Opposition MPs shall elect the LoP and I was elected.

After me, they did not follow the law and they started appointing leaders of Opposition and that rendered whoever was appointed LoP a personal choice of the party president.

It would make whoever was appointed vulnerable and loyal to the [party] president and that person would never enjoy the freedom that I enjoyed. And you can see the same attitude under Nandala Mafabi.

In 2018, Mafabi did to me what he has just done to [out-going FDC whip in Parliament] Ssemujju Nganda, claiming that the party had decided to send Honourable [Bernard] Atiku to the Pan-African Parliament.

They said they were sending him, as if there was a vacancy.  I ran to then Speaker of Parliament, Rt Hon Rebecca Kadaga, and told her that ‘I got this information, which means somebody is suggesting that I am no longer a member of the Pan-African Parliament. But I looked at the protocol that established the Pan-African Parliament and how somebody can become a member, or vacate the membership.

I went and looked at our rules of procedures, and was satisfied that I had not breached either the protocol or our rules of procedure. So I am proceeding to South Africa, you can handle the matter.’

When Mafabi brought the matter on the floor, Speaker Kadaga had verified what I had told her and she told Mafabi without hesitation that there was no ground for sending another person because FDC already had Prof Latigo in the Pan-African Parliament. 

They waited until Speaker Kadaga was out of the country and Mafabi again raised the matter with the Deputy Speaker, then the late Jacob Oulanyah, and Oulanyah said the same thing. And now they are doing the same thing against Ssemujju.

The party whip position is not a matter of the party outside Parliament, the whip ought to be a matter of the members of the FDC in Parliament, and they are the ones to elect their own leader.

Besides, the letter of Mafabi that kicked Ssemujju out does not make any reference to a resolution either of NEC or any other organ of the party.

Institutions operate on rules and frameworks, when you don’t have them, you cannot survive.
 
The cracks within Opposition parties FDC, Uganda Peoples Congress (UPC), Democratic Party (DP), etc. seem to suggest that these parties struggle beyond their founding leaders. Do you agree to this assumption?
You know that all the parties in Opposition are also victims of the machination of NRM. Instead of acknowledging that these parties are entities that reflect different perspectives of the politics of our country, with NRM, Opposition is enmity that cannot be.

And so while we talk about Besigye, [National Unity Platform party president Robert Kyagulanyi, aka] Bobi Wine, let’s not talk about them alone, they are merely actors in the bigger game of politics.

The biggest challenge and the underlying factor now is President Museveni; as long as he still wants to hold onto power, regardless of his failures as a leader, and regardless of the discontent in the country.

No party, even if we had all the money or all the brains, would survive because you would be cut down physically and you probably would be locked up. And that is the challenge.

Second, parties depend on the good will of those who look to the future to play key roles when the future is okay. People invest, just like investing in companies or in shares, if you don’t see a future in a company, you don’t put your money there. 

Therefore, because people don’t see a future in Uganda being stable, they will not put money in. That is why it is a lie for the Nandalas to suggest that they got some money from some donor.

There is no decent person who would put money in FDC because that money will have no return and, therefore, that money they are fighting over must have come from a source that finds interest in undermining the smooth existence of FDC. And that can only be government.

[DP president Norbert] Mao recently forged an alliance with the NRM party to “unite all Ugandans and rally for a common interest as well prepare the country for a transition”. Does Mao have the capacity to shoulder this mantle?
Mao’s link with NRM is not a DP party decision where a relevant caucus of the party sat and resolved unanimously, because if it is not, it becomes a linkage between Mao as an individual, or his cohorts, and either President Museveni or NRM. 

Anything which is not institutional has no value in the national interest of the country. Mao can run around and play his role as minister for Justice, but to suggest that Mao in his alliance with President Museveni is building something in which the country can move into a transition is idle talk.

Days ago, the World Bank suspended funding to Uganda over the anti-gay law recently enacted. Can Uganda survive without the World Bank?
In the first place, that law was not enacted to adjust a problem that you can touch, because what is the problem? Why don’t some of us know the [so-called] wazungus who come to [allegedly] ‘propagate homosexuality’, who the government knows and we the ordinary people don’t know?

Each time you see a law like that, government is looking for sentimental support because you will then have Christians very excited. 

When this thing first came under the [Ndorwa West MP David] Bahati Bill, I talked with then Prime Minister Apolo Nsibambi (RIP). I told him, ‘Apolo, as Opposition I would be very happy for you to enact this law because you will bring the wrath of the international community upon you’. 

But the biggest victory is when the World Bank etc. withdraw their funding to these ordinary Ugandans and, therefore, my advice to Nsibambi was let us leave this Bill to die. And that Bill died in the 8th Parliament when I was LoP and Nsibambi was Leader of Government Business.

It only came in the next Parliament and again when it came, I and many others went to court, not because I really cared; I have straight children, I wouldn’t worry about that. But I knew the impact if that Bill was to be enacted. 

Remember when the President went to the US, he had to go and find accommodation by his private means because even the hotels refused to host him. 

Those guys who do enact these laws [MPs], they don’t suffer the consequence. It is the ordinary Ugandans.

If we are smart at making the sacrifices we make, we must prepare to be self-sustaining. But when we depend on foreign money for everything, and you expect that you can speak on behalf of the owners of the money? That is being foolish.

Months ago, President Museveni made several directives in the Executive Order No. 3, but it is not being felt: the commercial charcoal trading, balaalo influx and Karimojong raids. Were these orders simply a political tool to calm the affected communities?
Since when did governance in Uganda turn to Executive Orders? These orders, I’m just hearing them for the first time in relation to Acholi.

There are many ministries involved. There are agencies to handle what an utterance of an individual does, because beyond being an utterance that Executive Order has no functional value. 

We have lately seen a rise in military coups in Africa. Are there lessons we can learn from them?
In 2014, when the NRM was going to remove former secretary general Amama Mbabazi, they called a delegates’ conference at Namboole and as I was coming home, I saw people excited. I came home and I could not sleep. I could not watch TV. 

So I went into my library and wrote an article, ‘Succession: Why can’t we learn from trees?’ It was published in The Observer. Those things will always be inevitable as long as we follow that path. 

You see, even in America, once politics became about an individual – [former president] Donald Trump – America is now very chaotic, and so the coups are the end result of African leadership where leaders go into positions of power, power goes into their heads and they become the policy. They become the institution, they become everything. 

In the end, if you are lucky you will survive. If you are not lucky, you will be killed. When coups happen, the outcome will always be chaos. I wrote about it in 2014, anybody interested should go look for my article online.

FDC ‘dirty money’

People don’t see a future in Uganda being stable, they will not put money in. That is why it is a lie for the Nandalas to suggest that they got some money from some donor.

There is no decent person who would put money in FDC because that money will have no return and, therefore, that money they are fighting over must have come from a source that finds interest in undermining the smooth existence of FDC. And that can only be government.