NUP, Kibalama lock horns over party constitution

May 16, 2024

NUP said on Wednesday that its secretary general, Lewis Rubongoya, and its legal team, appeared before the Electoral Commission (EC) in Kampala to respond to what it described as “a baseless complaint”.

The National Unity Platform (NUP) party and its founding president, Moses Kibalama (L), continue to lock horns in a legal battle over gazetting its new constitution. (File photo)

Umaru Kashaka
Journalist @New Vision

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The National Unity Platform (NUP) party and its founding president, Moses Kibalama, continue to lock horns in a legal battle over gazetting its new constitution.

NUP said on Wednesday that its secretary general, Lewis Rubongoya, and its legal team, appeared before the Electoral Commission (EC) in Kampala on Tuesday (May 14) to respond to what it described as “a baseless complaint” filed in January by three individuals only identified as Ekarlet, Saphy and Wilbert.

“Although the ridiculous complaint was filed in January, the Commission only brought it to our attention on April 26, 2024,” NUP, which is led by musician-turned-politician Robert Kyagulanyi aka Bobi Wine, said in a statement on X, formerly Twitter.

It said at the EC meeting, the three individuals, hitherto unknown to the party, but who now claim to be its members, were joined by Kibalama and Paul Ssimbwa, who served as secretary general under Kibalama’s leadership.

NUP's secretary general, Lewis Rubongoya, and its legal team, appearing before the Electoral Commission (EC) in Kampala on Tuesday (May 14). (Courtesy photo)

NUP's secretary general, Lewis Rubongoya, and its legal team, appearing before the Electoral Commission (EC) in Kampala on Tuesday (May 14). (Courtesy photo)

“They appeared with Ivan Bwowe [former Makerere University’s guild president] and Gideon Tugume as their lawyers. They also had with them some individuals who looked like State operatives, hiding their faces with masks and caps so that they could not be identified,” the statement said.

It also said as a preliminary matter, NUP’s team informed the EC that the three individuals are not members of the party but rather masqueraders and complete strangers to it.

“Their names do not appear in any of our registers - be it in the one we inherited from the former leadership or the new one. We are yet to establish who is using the three men this time around,” NUP said.

It stated that it also presented to EC a letter by the Uganda Law Council confirming that the law firm which purportedly complained on their behalf is fake and non-existent.

“We, therefore, questioned why the Commission was even willing to entertain the complaint in the first place. In fact, we asked that these individuals be handed over to Police to answer charges of forgery and fraud!”

However, it said in the end, EC decided that since the same group had yet again filed another matter at the High Court raising similar issues, they would not resolve the complaint, but wait for the outcome of the court matter.

Kibalama warns

Kibalama also issued a press statement in which he claimed that EC dismissed “the Rubongoya NUP constitution, which was smuggled onto the NUP file at the Electoral Commission political party’s register”.

“The implication of this development is that the Electoral Commission cannot continue with gazetting amendments to the fake NUP constitution and, therefore, any transactions or actions based on that fake NUP constitution are null and void. And whoever still has faith, hope and dealings with the NUP Kavule group does so at their own risk and peril,” he said.

“We have seen pictures of our MPs, local government and other grassroots leaders, purporting to be engaged in an exercise of membership registration and now wish to caution that it is all an exercise in futility and those who continue in such delusion will only have themselves to blame,” he added.

The statement says: "We wish to inform our members and the general public that we have established that Lewis Rubongoya and Benjamin Katana hired elements to trail the movements and monitor the homes of NUP leaders in disagreement with them, particularly that of founding NUP Leader Moses Nkonge Kibalama. May we now state that for whomsoever these two men claiming to be freedom fighters are working for, we will never be scared of them and we shall not be deterred from our set course of cleaning up the Party we founded".

On July 22, 2020, Kyagulanyi announced that his People Power Movement had morphed into a political party called NUP after entering into negotiations with the National Unity, Reconciliation and Development Party (NURP) under Kibalama.

Kibalama, who had been the NURP president for 16 years, on July 14, 2020, stepped down and a delegate’s conference attended by 60 members at Kakiri Gardens and Hotel in Wakiso district elected Kyagulanyi unopposed as the new president and also changed the name from NURP to NUP.

Rubongoya, who was the People Power Movement secretary-general, went on to serve in the same role in NUP.

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