Be disciplined, Bobi tells supporters

Former presidential candidate Robert Kyagulanyi, alias Bobi Wine, last night asked his supporters to be disciplined while pursuing civil disobedience, including peaceful demonstrations, over the January election results.

Bobi Wine, who stood on the National Unity Platform (NUP) ticket, said some of his supporters have internally targeted some party leaders who have not warmed up to his clarion call for mass protests.

“The thing I want to emphasise is discipline. We need to be the ones on the good side and exhibit all discipline that there is. If you see that a leader is not doing something, use everything within your means to do it. There is no time to begin fighting amongst ourselves. We have to remain focused,” he said.

Last Tuesday, Bobi Wine claimed he won the presidential ballot with 54.19 per cent while Mr Yoweri Museveni of the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM), whom the Electoral Commission (EC) declared winner with 58 per cent, got 38. 82 per cent. The former NUP flag bearer polled 35 per cent of the valid votes cast, according to the official results.

The incumbent’s re-election as proclaimed by the EC was made up, Bobi said, rallying his supporters to inundate offices of the electoral body countrywide in order to reclaim the victory and voice displeasure over the continued abductions and incarceration of his supporters in mainly military facilities.

Security deployment 
Bobi’s announcement last week was met with blanket security deployment, particularly in metropolitan Kampala, and no supporters have heeded his call for demonstrations that police vowed to stop.
“We are going to be arrested, but when all the prisons get full, they will have nothing to do [with] us. They will not kill us all; so, let us not give up on protesting which is in your right to do as provided for in Article 29 of the Constitution,” he said last night.

The Article on protection of freedom of conscience, expression, assembly and association in Section (d) provides for the “freedom to assemble and to demonstrate together with others peacefully and unarmed …”
In his address, Bobi Wine, reading from the book titled: Mission to Freedom: Uganda Resistance News, said: “When you look at this book, you only have to remove [former president] Milton Obote and replace it with Gen Museveni, remove [former chairman of the Military Commission] Paul Muwanga and replace him with [EC chairman] Justice Simon Byabakama and you will have the events that happened in 1981 to 1986 [when Museveni led a guerrilla movement against Obote’s government] also happening now.”

Bobi Wine also rallied clerics and cultural leaders to trumpet the voices of Ugandans fighting against injustice, inequality and state excesses.  

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