By Josephine Maseruka
and Milton Olupot

TWO former Buganda Katikkiros (premiers) Joseph Mulwanyamuli Ssemwogerere and Dan Muliika yesterday declared their support for the Inter-Party Cooperation (IPC), a loose grouping of opposition parties planning to field a single presidential candidate next year.

They are also special advisers to Buganda’s Kabaka (king) and have offices at the Bulange, the power seat of the kingdom. Ssemwogerere served from 1993 to 2009 and was replaced by the radical Muliika who only served for a year.

The ex-premiers made their announcement yesterday at a function at the at the Pope Paul Memorial Centre in Rubaga in Kampala, where the FDC launched its Buganda campaign.

The function attracted senior opposition politicians, among them FDC president Kizza Besigye, JEEMA’s flag-bearer Hussein Kyanjo, UPC’s Joseph Bbosa and DP’s Erias Lukwago and Betty Nambooze, who urged their party members to support the cooperation.

Responding to the development, the Government Chief Whip, Daudi Migereko, said: “What Dan Muliika is doing is nothing new. This is what he has always done even when he was in Mengo, but the NRM emerged victorious.”

He added: “The NRM will recruit more people in Buganda and we shall concentrate on grassroots mobilisation and service delivery to attend to issues that ordinary people consider important.”

Ssemwogerere was applauded by the opposition supporters after he read a nine-page statement critical of the Government in which he once served as the Masaka district administrator.

“I have requested the Kabaka to allow me resign my position as his adviser to start a crusade of ensuring that we have a change in the country’s leadership. We cannot sit and watch when everything is going wrong,” he said.

President Yoweri Museveni and Ssemwogerere studied at Dar-es-Salaam University and became members of the Front for National Salvation rebel group formed by Museveni in 1973 to oust Idi Amin.

“I offer my service to this nation by acting as a midwife of change. I will mobilise our people, political and civil society organisations to bring about change needed to make Uganda a prosperous and great nation,” Ssemwogerere said.

He attacked the Government over corruption and “inequitable” economic growth. He amused the gathering when he said the roads are so bad that it is hard to distinguish them from pot-holes, yet, he argued, trillions of shillings are dedicated to roads annually.

Ssemwogerere and Muliika said they were not joining any opposition party, but support the IPC objectives, which Kizza Besigye had outlined earlier.

They appealed to the DP to join the IPC, saying unity and cooperation was the best weapon to “topple the current corrupt and militant regime”.
Addressing the meeting, Besigye said the IPC government would urgently solve the main Buganda kingdom concerns.

“I equivocally commit FDC and IPC to the following: Establish a fair and workable federal system of government for all parts of Uganda that aspire to it, organise a national convention at the earliest time to resolve outstanding constitutional issues and to immediately return all properties of Buganda kingdom,” he announced.

Besigye also said the IPC would, on its first day in office, open CBS, the kingdom’s radio station.

The station was closed over inciting violence during the riots which rocked Buganda late last year after Katikkiro JB Walusimbi was stopped from entering Kayunga district to prepare for the Kabaka’s visit.

Besigye also pledged to ensure that the Kabaka enjoys “unfettered freedom” to move within his kingdom and to ensure its “territorial integrity”.

Muliika said the IPC’s manifesto should be made available to promote its presidential candidate.

“We support the IPC because it has similar concerns that hurt the people of Buganda. It is time for people with qualifications to contest for all elective positions because no one will defend Buganda’s interests better than ourselves,” Ssemwogerere stated.

Ssemwogerere and Muliika appealed to all people of voting age to register and to use their ballot, not the bullet, to choose their leaders.

NRM and DP reacts
NRM deputy spokesman Ofwono Opondo dismissed the former Katikkiros as being of no consequence in the political arena today.

Ofwono Opondo asked: “In which elections haven’t they supported Dr. Besigye? Muliika supported Besigye in 2001, when he was the reigning Katikkiro and it did not change anything. Ssemwogerere, while reigning Katikkiro in 1996, also supported IPFC, but it did not change much.”

“I don’t think their support is going to change the fortune of FDC or IPC. They have no influence in the democratic/political arena in Uganda to worry about,” he said.

DP president Norbert Mao said he had never known the two to have any political muscle.

He, however, added that if the former premiers had taken that route, it was their right to do so.

He said the DP does not believe in band-wagon politics, but in politics of conviction.

“If they are going to be in the campaign field, we shall meet there. I don’t know anyone of them having successfully run for a political office.”