What is Kulayigye up to about FDC and PRA?

By Wafula Oguttu

I wish to respond to Maj. Felix Kulayigye’s article titled, “Does Besigye control the PRA rebels?” in the New Vision of March 6, 2007. I am not sure whether he wrote as an NRM cadre or on behalf of our national army.

The gist of his article was that FDC is a political wing of an armed rebel group called the People’s Redemption Army (PRA). “The fact that Col. Mande is linked to the PRA and is also the zonal representative of the FDC to Scandinavia points to a possibility of a connection between FDC and PRA,” he wrote. He adds “In refusing to attend the 26th birthday of the army he helped to nurture, Dr. Besigye sent a wrong signal to the UPDF that the FDC has an alternative army. Could this be the PRA?”

He then answers his rhetoric question: “This is the modern way of conducting an armed rebellion. The leaders keep a distance from the criminality by forming a legal political organisation.”

The import of Kulayigye's reckless accusations which might be coming from the UPDF High Command is to try to criminalise FDC so that they start to deal with the party as a criminal rebel organisation. They hope this will scare off supporters and eventually break it up.

Any body who cares to understand the PRA saga story will see that the project, though botched up now, was to get rid of Besigye and criminalise FDC.

I speak for FDC. I do not speak for PRA. FDC is for a peaceful change of government. PRA was alleged to exist long before FDC was formed. I do not even believe that they exist as a rebel force. What I know about them is what the Kulayigyes have continued to allege in the media for close to four years. I have never heard that PRA attacked any part of Uganda or fired a shot at anybody. The so-called PRA suspects were arrested as early as 2003 but none has been tried and sentenced by any court of law. NRM leaders and some UPDF senior commanders are simply scared of FDC.

Yes, the NRM leaders will surely lose power to FDC. But why should UPDF officers be worried of losing their jobs because of the coming change of government if they are professional and non-partisan? It was not for nothing that the NRA was given a new name called UPDF. NRA was a partisan army. UPDF was meant to be a professional national army above all party affiliations.

Problem is that most UPDF commanders have failed to graduate into national public servants. They have remained in the partisan NRA guerrilla mode. Those who joined them are merely their workers. The rest of Ugandans are hostages who must forever remain indebted to those “who fought.”

Kulayigye is deliberately inciting senior officers of UPDF and intelligence agencies against Besigye and FDC. He says, “Dr Besigye has always expressed intentions to shake up the UPDF command and crack down on the intelligence organs like ESO, ISO and CMI”. He is lying because Besigye has never said this. But he goes on to conclude that “these security organs would be replaced by new ones or their commanders would be sacked and be replaced by the new liberators.”

What is Kulayigye or UPDF leaders up to? Why do they see their future as public servants in only one party, the NRM? This has serious implications on the multiparty politics in the country. Just before Kulayigye wrote his piece, the Chief of Defence Forces, Gen. Aronda Nyakairima, like a bolt out of the blue told Ugandans that “no one can topple the NRM government.” Who was planning to overthrow the government? Like it or not NRM government is certainly on its way out.

UPDF commanders should stop being partisan and do their work. Assist this country to have for the first time a truly professional, well paid and well equipped national army. They should stop politicking as cadres of any party. We have had too much army in the politics of Uganda. A multiparty dispensation requires the army and other civil servants to be neutral. Otherwise these childish games against the FDC will not help anybody.

The writer is the
spokesman of the FDC