I started FDC - Cecilia Ogwal

By David Lumu

DOKOLO Woman MP and former UPC strongwoman Cecilia Ogwal, has revealed why she joined FDC emphasizing that she was in the thick and thin of the formation of Uganda’s leading opposition party.

“I was part of the team that formed the Reform Agenda and later FDC. I was there all the time during the process that led to the formation of FDC. I am one of the people who started FDC,” she said.

The Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) was formally established in December 2004 and the party’s former president Dr. Kizza Besigye has challenged President Yoweri Museveni for the country’s top job and lost three times—2001, 2006 and 2011.

During an interview on Urban TV on Tuesday morning, Ogwal said that joining FDC in 2010 was no an accident because she had heavily participated in the primary stages that laid the foundation for the formation of the party.

“I could not join DP. To me FDC was home because I have been part of it for a long time,” she said, revealing that she has enjoyed working with the party, where she now serves as Opposition Chief Whip.

“I enjoyed the activist wave of Dr. Kizza Besigye and I am also enjoying the calm but solid wave of Major General Mugisha Muntu,” she said.

Speaking about the issue of retirement, Ogwal who has on several occasions called upon President Museveni to retire said that she will not retire in 2016.

“It is automatic; I will contest in 2016,” she said.

Ogwal’s problems with UPC, a party she served as in the capacity of Acting Secretary General between 1985 and 1992, started when she lost the Lira municipality seat to Jimmy Akena, the son of Dr. Apollo Milton Obote, the party’s founder.

She first sat on the fence under the guise of an independent but later found haven in FDC.

Last week, Ogwal, who won the first Miss Uganda held in 1969 at the Apollo Milton Hotel, was in the news recently for highlighting what Government described as ‘malicious’ figures indicating the hefty salary scales of State House employees.