Museveni admits holding talks with Mbabazi to resolve political differences

PRESIDENTIAL POLLS|MUSEVENI|MBABAZI

President Yoweri Museveni has revealed that he has been having talks with the former Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi aimed at resolving their political differences.

Museveni made the revelation while speaking to National Resistance Movement (NRM) aspirants in Kitgum where he was winding up his campaigns for the 2021 election in Northern Uganda. 

Museveni is tussling out with 10 other candidates for the race of the country's presidency in General elections that are to be held on January 14.

Mbabazi who is a long-term confidant of President Yoweri Museveni was dropped as Prime Minister in September 2014 and subsequently as NRM secretary general in December 2014 following reports that he was scheming to take over the party.

He subsequently declared in 2015 he would run against President Museveni under the Go-forward political movement, contested and lost. 

The two have been secretly meeting but recent photos of the two were shared by the State House indicating their closeness once again.

Museveni also noted that he had reached out to his other political friends they had disagreed with, "I had differences with my late friend Eriya Kategaya. They took some positions which were unfair according to my opinion but after the 2006 election, I invited him and asked him, Eriya do you still support our ideas? He said yes the only problem he had said I go home. Go home who will manage to finish the job and you thought you could do it better when you are alone than when we are together? I didn't agree with what they were saying," Museveni said.

Museveni and Kategaya fell out after the latter opposed the removal of the term limits in 2005 from the 1995 Constitution.

Museveni also noted that he had spoken to other leaders like Betty Kamya the former President of the Federal Alliance political party and brought them back to Government. Kamya is now the Minister for Lands.

"We are after aims and not individual issues," Museveni revealed.

From history, Museveni says he contacted Mbabazi in 1974 after an attack on Uganda backfired and some prominent people, including Dr. Ruhakana Rugunda (now Prime Minister), who was part of Museveni's underground network, had to flee the country. 

Mbabazi was among the leaders of the Front for National Salvation (FRONASA) movement that recruited combatants to fight the dictators such as Idi Amin in the 1970s.