Then Forum for Democratic Change Women’s League chairperson Ingrid Turinawe (right) confronts a police officer during a women demonstration at then Electoral Commission offices in Kampala in 2010. FILE PHOTO.
When, on Monday, a group of politicians belonging to the Katonga faction of the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) confronted the police as they tried to petition the Kenyan embassy over their colleagues who were arrested in Kisumu last month, there were prominent faces. These included lawmakers Ibrahim Ssemujju Nganda (Kira Municipality) and Nicholas Kamara Thadeous (Kabale Municipality); Kampala Deputy Lord Mayor Doreen Nyanjura; Roland Mugume Kaginda, a former Rukungiri Municipality lawmaker; and Harold Kaija (the secretary general of FDC Katonga faction).
There were also not-so-prominent faces: Wahab Musinguzi; Eric Wasswa; Phiona Kabayiza; Zalikah Mutesi; Gilbert Nayebare, a hawker; and Innocent Turyahikayo.
There was also Ingrid Turinawe. Three years after taking a hiatus from activism and politics, she returned to the turf that had defined her for years, including confrontations with the police.
Before the 2021 General Election, Turinawe had come to epitomise what is now commonly known as being a foot soldier. Such was her mastery of the same that she was nicknamed “Commander Lands Forces.”
Face of Walk-to-Work
In all the demonstrations, engineered by the FDC albeit through an all-inclusive activists’ vehicle known as Activists for Change (A4C), Opposition doyen Dr Kizza Besigye came to be the focal point. This as security agencies formed a security ring around his house to stop him from triggering a mass uprising against the National Resistance Movement (NRM) regime.
Ms Turinawe came to give these protests a semblance of gender balance. It was, therefore, not surprising when she also became a target of security forces, who would cordon her home in Gayaza, Wakiso District.
“I thank the police for letting you know I’m a resident of this area. Most times you have heard about me. I’m Ingrid Turinawe, the coordinator of Walk-to-Work,” she said in 2012 after the police had besieged her home. “I’m the woman who was jailed in Luzira prison on allegations of plotting to overthrow President Museveni. Is it a crime to overthrow Museveni?”
Turinawe had been charged with treason with a group of FDC activists in 2012 for participating in the Walk-to-Work protests in the aftermath of the 2011 elections and the inflation that came with it. She quickly became a favourite of FDC activists or foot soldiers and she swiftly replaced Gen Mugisha Muntu as the party’s secretary for mobilisation.
Two contrasting defeats
Turinawe, however, struggled to translate her organising skills and popularity with FDC activists into real elective political wins. During the 2015 FDC primaries, she gracefully accepted her loss to Kaginda when they vied for the Rukungiri Municipality MP seat. Following the defeat, she concentrated on coordinating Dr Besigye’s 2016 presidential campaigns. But she couldn’t repeat that same action when in 2020, the little-known Dr Wallen Niwagaba Tumwiine defeated not only her but also Kaginda, the incumbent, to take the FDC ticket for Rukungiri Municipality, which hosts the country home of Dr Besigye.
Whilst Kaginda conceded, Ms Turinawe branded the entire process a sham.
“I left NRM because I hated election of salt (i.e., bribery),” she quipped back then, adding: “I’m worried if this is the trend, Museveni shall come and stand in FDC and defeat us there. You told me I’m able and capable, but I had no money. We must defeat this. This is not the FDC we started.”
Turinawe decided to stand as an independent and this, at least to many within FDC power corridors, contributed to NRM’s Elisa Rutahigwa’s victory. This as FDC split votes between Turinawe and Tumwiine. Losing Rukungiri Municipality was a personal loss for FDC since it is the home of its founding president, Dr Besigye, and the party has come to dominate the politics of the area ever since it was created.
Fallout with Mafabi
Having swept Rukingiri electoral positions in the 2016 elections, the expectation was the FDC would consolidate the wins. But by the time Ugandans went to vote in January 2021, party officials were at loggerheads as a result of contentious primaries.
Replicating the previous victories eventually proved to be hard.
The fallout from the FDC primary was reduced to a battle between Turinawe and Budadiri West lawmaker Nathan Nandala Mafabi. When Turinawe decided to stand as an independent, Mafabi was quick to write a letter informing her that she was constitutionally no longer a member of the FDC. Mafabi cited article 12( d) of the party’s constitution, which stipulates that “if a member joins another party or in an election stands as an independent, he or she ceases to be a member of FDC.”
Turinawe accused Mafabi of double standards, pointing out two scenarios in 2015 before the 2016 General Election. In Rubaga Division, she argued, John Kikonyogo, then the party deputy spokesperson, stood as an independent against FDC flag bearer and eventual winner Joyce Ssebugwawo. She asked why Kikonyogo was never expelled from the party.
Another example Turinawe cited was when Christopher Acire, a former Gulu Municipality lawmaker and Reagan Okumu, FDC’s national vice president for northern Uganda, competed for Aswa County. Acire dashed to the High Court in Gulu Town accusing the party’s electoral commission then of handpicking Okumu. Justice Margret Mutoni reacted by declaring that both Acire and Okumu should run as independents since the party had not held a primary.
Although FDC officials had previously explained that Okumu’s standing as an independent was purely the decision of the court and not his, Turinawe insisted they never penalised him.
“Reagan Okumu stood as an independent, but Nandala never expelled him from the party. Why me?” she asked.
Turinawe also accused Mafabi of not responding to her numerous petitions.
“We wrote petitions to Nandala and he never answered them,” she disclosed. “Now it’s too late. I’m standing as an independent and I’m going to win. Nandala will need me. He should be very careful.”
What next?
If Turinawe expected to get one over Mafabi by winning the seat, it didn’t come to pass as she came third, having garnered only 2,266 votes. This sent her into some kind of political sabbatical. She, nevertheless, identified her opponent as Mafabi, adding that a return to the party’s ranks would be when he was no longer secretary general of the party.
“I’m still taking my time. I will tell you when the right time comes,” Ms Turinawe, who was once the leader of FDC’s women’s league, once said when asked about her next political move.
Her moment of victory over Mafabi came last year when the idea of a united FDC ended after the Katonga faction led by Dr Besigye accused the Najjanankumbi faction led by Mafabi and Patrick Oboi Amuriat of getting “dirty” money that had roots from State House.
Turinawe reminded every person who cared to listen that Mafabi had expelled her from the party and thus she was just an outsider like anybody else.
“Friends, family, well-wishers and the media who keep calling and inviting me to give comments about the current situation in FDC, let me remind you that for three years now, I have not been a member of FDC after being chased from the party by Nandala Mafabi,” Turinawe said. “My biggest offence was petitioning against a fraud[ulent] primary election in which my opponent used dissimilar names. A ballot paper read a different name from his name. He was just given the flag after dishing out money but the real him was not on the ballot paper.”
With the Katonga faction ruling out the possibility of reconciling with Mafabi and Amuriat, and also in the final processes of starting a new political party, Turinawe sees another opportunity of restarting her political career.
“We have been engaging her to re-join us and she is taking her time, but you will be seeing her frequently with Mafabi gone,” a source familiar with Turinawe’s thinking revealed on condition of anonymity.
