JEEMA is not Muslim extremist party-Kyanjo

Who are the founding forces behind your party?
There are major names but prominent among them is Mohammed Kibirige Mayanja; myself Hussein Kyanjo, Rev. Santo Okema, Alex Ojok and one lady Betty Achen.

Is it true that your party has a hidden ultra-Muslimist agenda?
That is what some of those who don’t take interest think about us. But that is dependent on two factors; one there are those who would deliberately not wish Muslims to do anything useful and then there are those who don’t pay attention to events. The names of Alex Ojok and Rev. Santo have been there for as long as the Justice Forum. Jeema is a national party and it has its doors open. It accommodates every type of view except those views that don’t respect us.

Don’t you think that those who hold this opinion may be vindicated by the fact that all the top leaders of this party have been Muslim?
Naturally, if there is an idea mooted by an individual from a given region, even if you went to London and found a small corner that has been dominated either by Somalis or Indians, it is common knowledge that probably the first shop keeper at that place was Indian. What would be dangerous is to find a place where non-Indians are not allowed. The most important question would have been do you allow non-Muslims to join Jeema? Jeema doesn’t belong to Muslims. Everyone who comes to Jeema enjoys a free ride to every place, every corner.

Well, the former president Kibirige Mayanja is Muslim, the current president Asuman Basalirwa is Muslim and you the current party flag bearer for the presidential election is Muslim.
Those are facts that have been challenged in the past and we have made deliberate efforts to reach out to our colleagues. I can assure that there are a number of non-Muslim members of the Justice Forum. But at the same time there are those who still find themselves near the voting line; that if there is anybody going to become flag bearer maybe he is the one around

I am sure that by the closure of the next government, very many non-Muslim individuals would have come to the front bench and would very happily take up the leadership in Jeema in an easy form like we have been able to take over from Mayanja.

Where does your party get the money to pay its bills and run campaigns?
We had two major sources in the past but now we have three. We have never given cards for free. We print so many cards and sell them at Shs2,000 each. Amazingly, we get a lot of money from selling these cards all over the country and outside. I remember going to London and selling cards worth Shs15 million. It is not that we have got unknown sources. The second source are people who are well wishers to this party. We have got a number of them but we decided not to disclose anyone who gives us the amount of money that is beyond what would be expected. The third source now has been the people we work with from foreign agencies like the Deepening Democracy, NDI, IRI [International Republican Institute], Friedrich Ebert Stiftung

How do you respond to criticism that your party largely represents conservative Islamic attitudes towards life?
I think that is absolute nonsense. There is nothing to substitute that one. If there was any requirement that if you join a political party then you turn down the religion or tribe you belong to, then there would have been a legitimate argument for someone who says you refused to turn down your religion. I think I am a committed Ugandan in as much as I am a committed Muslim in as much as I am a committed Muganda. What we stand for is absolutely one thing; justice.

Apart from the broad promise of justice, what does Jeema intend to sell in 2011?
We are trying to sell our broader manifesto to the IPC [Interparty Cooperation] first; where we have a lot of trust. We take our manifesto there and present these views and then out of the manifestos of the different candidates, we shall squeeze out a major IPC manifesto which we have to run along through the campaigns.

Jeema, at its own level, is looking so much in the direction of justice. There is a lot of injustice in this country but in any case, myself as Kyanjo, I want to look into the issue of unemployment and jeopardy in the economy. If I went through as IPC flag bearer and subsequently as President of this republic, I will turn around some of the policies. I will have to reverse the trend of government not doing business. I have areas where government must do business in transport, microfinance; government-sponsored banks aimed at empowering those in the agriculture sector. It is shameful that today we have 90 per cent of Ugandans still staying on the land directly and benefiting from it but the contribution to the economy is 1.4 per cent; that is shameful and I will not allow it.

We shall look very closely at the issue of involvement of government in bringing back to life businesses that would have collapsed. It has been happening here but it is discriminative and selective. Some companies are allowed to collapse while others are given help in order to survive. We are going to put up a balanced attitude in supporting viable businesses and we are going to tone down this idea of getting loans. It is not true that everyone who has to develop must get a loan. There are people who can be given proper direction and they develop small businesses without necessarily getting loans.

What has Jeema’s experience been with coalitions?
We worked with what used to be called the G6; then we had piecemeal arrangements with individual parties. We worked with the Democratic Party. DP has a number of people in Makindye West and it would not be an honest presentation to say the majority of members in Makindye West are Jeema. They are a mix of the DP, UPC, FDC and some from the NRM. Our experience on the whole has been fairly all right. There are challenges of not understanding things in the same way, not having the same form of policies but these are challenges that are not insurmountable.

There are fears that the IPC is barely holding together as egos and ambitions of both party and individuals threaten to derail a plan to approach the 2011 contest as one.
Maybe I was unable to observe that closely. I see people are still honest and are working hard enough to make sure that we build a relationship that will stay for a long time. It is not going to start in Uganda. Our view is that it would be hopeless to go into a contest and then you contest the contest or the results of the contest and then you kill one another and afterwards you sit and agree. We must start with the most important part, we have to sit down and agree. If we disagreed then that would be a different story.

But the Democratic Party has disagreed and said it is ready to go it alone.
No they haven’t disagreed. The DP has to receive sympathies from everybody around. It is an old party which was mentored on the principles of truth and justice. But along the way it was invaded by different individuals who don’t think in the same way as those who started the DP. It is not very easy or wise to say we are dismissing members who don’t have similar views like ourselves. Given its age in the history of Uganda and the size of its followers, it was not erroneous for them to take steps more closely, more carefully. I am sure DP has a few days to accept this idea of coming together because they are not objectionable to the idea but that they have practical difficulties. Some of our parties are finding it easy because of the new speed we came with, the age and lack of extra baggage. DP has that extra baggage and it’s baggage that belongs to themselves so they have to take care. If DP is taking cautious steps, I think it is understandable. But very soon you will hear a surprise announcement from the DP.

Would you be surprised if the IPC elected you joint candidate and how would you deal with the [DP leader Norbert] Mao factor?
I wouldn’t. If I was surprised then I would be a very hopeless person. The reason I joined politics was to advance positive views and the reason the people of Jeema elected me as flag bearer is because they thought I was equal to the task. So, the moment I am elected as IPC flag bearer, I have to reach out not only to President Mao, but to everyone whom I think is important in the politics of Uganda. That means every single individual who has an opinion that is not similar to ourselves will have to be reached. I will humble myself before them and tell them the logic of working together.

Is there anything the IPC leadership is doing which you would approach differently?
Well, the IPC is in transition. First of all, you don’t know the actual candidate of the IPC right now. That is a major transitional component. There are agreements we have so far finished and there are those we have not completed. These transitional stages are very difficult to put together and say these are concluded positions. What I am going to do is what we have been doing together as IPC. I haven’t found anything fundamentally different from what I would do except for the element of handling these people who have not agreed with us with extra consistency.

What in your opinion is Jeema’s largest constituency and why?
Strangely, it would be the constituency of people who think we are on the side of justice. People who think that justice is still important. That is the first element Jeema is going to add into the coalition of the willing. Jeema is going to attract many people in the business section. I was personally a business man and we have very many people operating in the Justice Forum; some of our governors like Buganda Minister Buwembo are people who are deep in business but who have learnt the way of doing business together with national politics and together with nation building. Third element would be the people who think it is not useless to go to school; the intellectuals. Then there are localised elements; there are sympathies from Buganda region, those who think that Muslims had not had a positive voice in the whole past and now their children have gone to school and are presenting a good deal to Ugandans.

What are you impressions of your party’s penetration around the country?
I have two opinions; one an open broad day opinion, second is the secret opinion. The open broad day opinion is that when you go around looking for the people of Jeema in a rally or trading centre, you may not find many of them. But if you went in the evening asking people who belong to Jeema, you would be amazed by their number.

What do your records show?
Oh, the records show this. When we got into the national presidential election, the exercise we made around the country gathered votes that were not the same votes announced. We discovered this a long time ago. After that there was a wave of arrests all over the country and they were made to be punitive to those who had given us support. The registers of those who were arrested are tremendously huge. When we went back to cross check the individuals who had given us their vote, we discovered it was a large number. That is why when we left that broader perspective we said let’s go and try that constituency, I was voted.

In terms of numbers, where does Jeema stand?
Members in Jeema are not the members who vote Jeema. The members who are properly registered with us are less than 200,000. But people who vote Jeema are tremendously beyond millions. But because we have consistently been talking about rigging, nobody can prove me wrong or right until a correct vote was put to test.

Is Asuman Basulirwa’s presidency part of a grand 2016 scheme? How is Jeema plotting for Parliamentary seats?
We have identified candidates in a number of areas and we are still persuading formidable candidates all over the country to go and stand. We are so hungry for candidates for Member of Parliament but we are also extremely cautious that we shouldn’t present mediocres to Ugandans. We know what they have done to this country. It is sometimes easy to obtain candidates but some other times difficult to get formidable candidates. But on the whole, we are going to have a number of MPs standing on the ticket of Jeema but through the sieving mechanism of IPC. I must admit we have not been able to cover the whole Uganda with MPs but that is technically partly because we discourage some.

On a personal note, who is Hussein Kyanjo?
I come from a humble background of a commercial farmer called Hajji Zirabamuzale Jakana in Masaka District, Bukomansimbi in a small village called Ntuma. I was born in 1960. I first studied at a Muslim school in Bwaise, but I left that school and went to my home village. I studied at Mbulire Primary School, I went to Kako Primary School. At Kako one prominent person I studied with and we were staying on the same bed was Caleb Akandwanaho who is commonly known in Uganda as Salim Saleh (President Museveni’s brother). We were together in the same school, same class, same bed. From there I went to Masaka Senior Secondary School and I was head prefect in that school. I was a major electrician at the school but I was doing physics very badly. I was also an artist. I could go and do well in fine art but then fail physics. From there I joined Makerere University and I did a bachelors degree in fine art. But during my time as a student, I used to do business in Kenya, I was bringing fine art material and distributing them around the region. After that I came straight to business and started doing graphics and printing. I was one of the first people to bring computerised graphics to Uganda. I was one of the first people to bring the science of road billboards in Uganda. People were printing these boards in Dubai and South Africa.

Married, children?
I am a family man. I have wives and children.

And your political journey?
My journey is aiming at seeing Uganda where everybody doesn’t have to be given a favour. I don’t want a Uganda where people have to wait for favours. I want to fight for people’s rights. I am a Ugandan who wants to serve everybody without discrimination.

I began to get interested in politics as a young boy. I used to listen to DW radio and most of the news was political in nature. I got interested. But I joined mainstream politics when Mr Kibirige Mayanja invited me and wanted me to be his spokesman. I accepted and later he promoted me to be campaign manager for his presidential bid. I used a lot of my expertise I had picked from radio and television to enrich my own exercise as a politician. I also got an opportunity in 1996 after the elections to go to the US and study for a while; I was one of the participants who observed the second re-election of Bill Clinton. Those gave me a lot of insights and I am a wide traveller.