Kampala Lord Mayor Erias Lukwago interacts with some of the delegates who attended the conference at Katonga on August 19, 2024. PHOTO/ ISAAC KASAMANI
A faction of the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) yesterday said it had resolved to dissolve the mother party and convert its property as start-up asset for a new political outfit.
The decision was reached at the splinter group’s National Delegates’ Conference convened in Kampala by Ambassador Waswa Birigwa who said court pronounced him as still the substantive FDC national chairman with powers to summon the summit.
He alongside other party luminaries, including founding President Kizza Besigye, last year broke ranks with the executives superintending FDC affairs at its headquarters in Najjanankumbi on Entebbe Road.
This followed accusations first levelled by Dr Besigye and later his loyalists that FDC president Patrick Oboi Amuriat and Secretary General Nandala Mafabi received “dirty money” from State House to compromise the party ahead of the 2021 elections.
The duo denied the allegations as contrived to undermine them and disparage their reputation. The implosion culminated in the dissenters, among them Kampala Lord Mayor Erias Lukwago and Kira Municipality Member of Parliament Ibrahim Ssemujju Nganda, seeking refuge at Besigye’s private office on Katonga Road in Nakasero in Kampala’s Central Business District.
After hours of deliberations there yesterday by what faction leaders said were some 800 delegates drawn from across the country, Mr Lukwago, who doubles as the acting president of the FDC splinter group, emerged to proclaim that they had ignited the process to dissolve the mother party within six months.
“Until this process we have initiated here is done,” he told journalists, “We are still members of FDC … No one should be worried out there. I am the Lord Mayor of Kampala on FDC ticket and so are other leaders including our Members of Parliament.”
Across the capital, in Najjanankumbi headquarters, FDC leaders questioned the legitimacy and legality of the Katonga team and their “purported resolutions”.
“How can a group of people sit somewhere and dissolve a party they don’t lead or are not part of?” asked Mr Hassan Kaps Fungaro, the deputy president of FDC for northern Uganda.
Legally registered
Mr Fungaro said the Electoral Commission-recognised and legally registered party headquarters are in Najjanankumbi, with Secretary General Mafabi running the secretariat, while signatories to the FDC accounts are domiciled there as well.
“This isn’t an issue of ‘dirty money’; it is a fight over power and position for influence,” he said.
The Katonga faction said up to 804 delegates attended yesterday’s National Delegates’ Conference, prompting Najjanankumbi last night to argue in addition to questions about the authenticity of the delegates, the numbers reported in attendance fall below the legal threshold to attempt a dissolution of the party.
Records from the FDC secretariat show that there are up to 1,560 delegates of the party eligible to attend the National Delegates’ Conference.
Section 36(1) of FDC Constitution provides that “the National Delegates’ Conference or the Special Conference may dissolve the party by two-thirds majority of all delegates of National Delegates Conference and transfer the assets and liabilities of the party”.
Put another way, the Katonga group would have required at least 1,040 delegates to constitute two-thirds majority of all of the delegates.
The delegates comprise members of the FDC National Executive Committee, Members of Parliament elected on the party ticket, two representatives from every parliamentary constituency (chairperson and general secretary), and five from each district: chairperson, general secretary, secretary for mobilisation, chairperson of youth and the chairperson of the women league.
The splinter group said 99 percent of the delegates who attended yesterday’s conference endorsed the resolutions to disband the mother party and founding of a replacement one, which was not named and whose promoters were not disclosed.
According to the team at Katonga, they intend to file a written notice to the National Electoral Commission which, if not challenged, will greenlight them to secure support of two-thirds of the districts in Uganda as an additional requirement to take their push to dissolve FDC forward.
The party was formed on August 7, 2004 through the merger of the Reform Agenda pressure group, the Parliamentary Advocacy Forum (PAFO) and the National Democratic Forum.
Its founding president Besigye said the party has since been captured by greedy and money-minded leaders who have veered off the original mission articulated in Article 6 of its Constitution: establishing a truly united and peaceful Uganda and the empowerment of its people for better quality life.
Not happy
“Mr Museveni captured our wealth and he is now using that money to buy off political opponents and disorganise the country, but we shall overcome,” he said.
“Some people think that the 20 years [of FDC’s existence] were wasted, but I want to assure you that we used them to weaken Mr Museveni’s government which cannot now fund its own operations,” added the four-time presidential challenger.
Accusations of the kind the ex-personal physician of President Museveni echoed yesterday are not new from him or within the party whose face he was for years before infighting began eating at the soul of what then was Uganda’s largest opposition party.
Former FDC party president Muntu Muntu, a former army commander, was hounded out on claims that he was a mole for the state, although he quipped upon departure that time would reveal the true double-faced individuals within the rank-and-file of FDC.
He and other luminaries broke ranks to form the Alliance for National Transformation party, years after Beti Kamya, now the government Ombudsman after serving as a Besigye special envoy, defected to lead the Uganda Federal Alliance on whose ticket she unsuccessfully ran for president in 2011.
Kampala Lord Mayor Lukwago yesterday said that except for Teso, Rwenzori and Acholi sub-regions, all other members they consulted countrywide endorsed the formation of a new party to drive the change they want in the leadership and governance of Uganda.
The other proposals on the table had included continued push for the ouster of current FDC mainstream leaders, a reconciliation on condition that they vacate office voluntarily, advance the struggle to liberate Uganda under a framework of a social movement akin to the Reform Agenda, or forget all about the divisive party politics, which too, would entail dissolution of FDC and not forming a new Party.
In an interview with this newspaper, FDC president Amuriat said their response, tentatively planned for mid-this week, would be informed by how the faction behaves.
Mr Jack Sabiiti, elected in the wake of the fall-out as FDC national chairman to replace Ambassador Birigwa, said last evening that the party will forever be guided by its constitution and ideologies, and dismissed the creeping political coup from the Katonga frontline.
“Once a person is born, he remains the same person despite changing names several times. FDC is FDC. It has its ideologies and constitution. The party has structures that stipulate how it should be governed. Those who want to change its ideologies won’t succeed. FDC will remain the same with or without them,” he said.
Ambassador Birigwa earlier in the day had said that the dissolution of FDC was necessary as part of their journey of liberating Ugandans from a “dictatorial regime”.
“We are the ones who have the mantle to take this country forward. We must restore the correct rule of law, with this new formation, we are going to State House,” he said.
In a rejoinder, Mr Fungaro, the FDC deputy president for northern Uganda, said the resolution by a splinter team to kill the party is inconsequential and asked the dissenters to abandon their animosity and reconcile.
“The divisions are unfortunate. We hope may be in future we will agree to cooperate and work for the common good of Uganda and Ugandans as separate Opposition actors,” he said.
