Oh what a year: CBS closed, Kazini dead..

A New Year dawns. Yes it has come. To look to the future when the past still clings on us is a daunting task. We cannot change the past, but all we can do is make the best of our lives. Conan Businge captures part of last year’s memorable quotes, which form part of a past we cannot change.

President Yoweri Museveni: “I invited the investors (BIDCO) to start this project (Palm oil project in Kalangala district) here though some people wanted to block it because they wanted to protect butterflies instead of development. But butterflies can go and live elsewhere.”

Forum for Democratic Change president Kizza Besigye: “Museveni can no longer negotiate on our behalf with other countries because he is untrustworthy.”

Kampala Mayor Nasser Sebaggala: “I recently heard my friend, Besigye publicly saying he would go after whoever touched the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting money when he comes to power. Not that I support stealing of public funds, but it is this kind of political threats and vengeance that has caused Robert Mugabe to cling to power in Zimbabwe.”

President Yoweri Museveni: “You (journalists in Uganda) rarely inform. You rarely educate. You entertain, yes. But you mostly lie and incite. I have so much evidence to prove all this. When you try to imitate the Western media, you will run into problems.”

People’s Progressive party President Jaberi Bidandi Ssali: “The so-called discovery of ghost voters on the voters register is a ploy by President Yoweri Museveni and the National Resistance Movement to condition the minds of Ugandans.”

Maj Gen Kahinda Otafiire: “My war against (NRM Secretary General) Amama Mbabazi is our own personal affair, nobody should join it. You should support him as our Secretary General but leave me to fight him since we are at the same level. My disagreement with Mbabazi is ideological not personal, so it cannot be a love-hate relationship.”

Forum for Democratic Change President Kizza Besigye: “I know for a fact that while in the Luweero struggle, Museveni never fired a single shot throughout the entire war. I challenge him to tell us where he ever opened fire on the enemy.”

Anonymous Senior NRM cadre: “My colleagues are dead. Do you want me dead too? Please let us not talk about those agreements (between Buganda and the National Resistance Army during the Museveni guerilla war) now. I have written down everything; my children will publish it when I die.”

President Yoweri Museveni: “I am the one who advocated for the restoration of these institutions and if people misuse them, they can be removed.”

Brig. Charles Angina; a daring and uncompromising UPDF officer: “We pray that God will give wisdom to President Yoweri Museveni to select righteous people in public offices, who will not steal from our country.”

Chief of Defence Forces Gen. Aronda Nyakairima: “HIV/AIDS is still with us and many people are getting wasted; wasting the taxpayers’ money. After passing a number of soldiers in Uganda, they serve for a short time and die.”

Democratic Party spokesperson Betty Nambooze: “The President (Yoweri Museveni) sends him (Tamale Mirundi-) on radios to tell the people to kill the landlords. After killing them, the Tamale’s turn and arrest them (the killers). Their plan is to kill the Kabaka in disguise of landlords.”

Foreign Affairs minister Sam Kutesa: “Theodore Ssekikubo (Lwemiyaga County) is mad. I have never held such a meeting (task force to sabotage investigations into senior ministers’ misuse of CHOGM funds), and those allegations are ridiculous.”

Supreme Court Judge George Kanyeihamba: “There should be no room in public service for idle, malingerers, or abusers of office. The President will support and applaud you if you start weeding out those near you.”

Justice John Baptist Katutsi, in his ruling which sent Teddy Cheeye to Luzira: “Think of hundreds of thousands of victims of HIV/AIDS, TB and malaria who include innocent children from whom he (former ISO boss) robbed the little opportunity to receive a bit of comfort, nay a new lease to life, and you will know what beast he is. The time of reckoning is now. Impunity must be looked in the face and told; No more of this.”
President Yoweri Meseveni, referring to a number of times he tried to reach the King of Buganda on phone for the last two years, with no luck: “Wherever any controversy came up involving Mengo, I would telephone His Highness the Kabaka; he would however, not answer my telephone calls as usual… It is always the person whose leg you treated who kicks you.”
On November 10, Kampala woke up to the news that Maj. Gen. James Kazini had been murdered. Eye witnesses said, shortly after the murder, Draru walked to a nearby boda boda stage and declared that she had killed her husband. During the arrest the Police sources said Draru openly confessed; “I have killed him and I do not care where you take me.”

And to crown the year was the probe into the Commonwealth expenditure by the public accounts committee (PAC) of Parliament. During the probe, MPs ordered permanent secretaries and MPs who had got black berry phones for use during the Commonwealth meeting in 2007, to either pay for them or return them. “Didn’t you think that you were violating Government laws by buying equipment and donating it?” asked the lead counsel of the PAC Tom Kazibwe NRM.