Poverty, greed to blame for FDC divisions, says Besigye

Opposition politician, Col (Rtd) Dr Kizza Besigye, has said greed for money and poverty among senior Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) leaders are responsible for the current divisions in the party.

Addressing his supporters in Kitgum Municipality on Sunday, Dr Besigye also revealed that a section of his colleagues tried coercing him into negotiating with the government for financial support, which he rejected.

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He revealed that several individual leaders were betraying the party by secretly receiving money from the ruling NRM.
“I want to tell you what happened in FDC. Because we have been fighting for a long time, even the leaders who lead FDC have become poorer and poorer, and from time to time, because of the problems surrounding them, they hand themselves to Mr Museveni because he is the one with money,” he said.

Towards the 2021 General Election, Dr Besigye said some FDC top leaders approached him to accept a deal with the ruling government for a financial bailout.

“They came to me and said, ‘you can see our people are surrendering one by one; very soon we shall not have leaders, and they will have gone because they have a lot of problems,’” he said.
“I badly disagreed with them. Even if you are in a bad position, fighting for your country is not a simple thing. We shall pass through difficulties, but we must be strong, and resilient, and tighten our belts even in poverty. How can we fail to defeat Museveni?” he wondered.

Dr Besigye explained to supporters that while the same problem had rocked other opposition parties such as the Democratic Party (DP) and the Uganda People’s Congress (UPC), he is not giving up on the fight to remove President Museveni from power.

“That is why I have come back to talk about the whole country, how we get ourselves out of these problems, and do so as quickly as possible. I do not think we should sit here claiming we are waiting for the elections of 2026, which are already rigged. If we fight together, we can change this country, whether this election is held or not,” he said.

Dr Besigye also criticised the National Resistance Movement (NRM) party, which he claimed has rendered Ugandans to live like refugees in their own country.
“We live in Uganda but Uganda is not yet our country; we just live there. Refugees in Uganda sometimes, if not most of the time, live better than Ugandans. FDC struggles to return the country into the hands of Ugandans so that we can share Uganda equally,” he said.
According to him, poor education standards and healthcare continue to prevail besides the heavy taxes that Ugandans shoulder every day.

“Even when we pay a lot of money in taxes every day, it does not serve us because we don’t control Uganda, we don’t control our money, and we don’t control our wealth. The whole of Uganda is managed just by a family,” he added.
As part of his new strategy to cause a regime change, Dr Besigye also disclosed that he is beginning to rally Ugandans to hold non-violent protests.

“If we are coordinated throughout the country and say that from Tuesday, nobody moves food for sale anywhere; keep your food, the groups formed then monitor compliance. The 10 people will make sure there is no one carrying the food. I can assure you that in one week, those with guns will have no food,” he said.
“We shall form teams around the whole country, teams starting with yourselves, small teams like 10 people, and we coordinate them; if we are coordinated all of us, we have a lot of power that guns cannot defeat,” he added. 

Background
The FDC divisions came to light in August last year when a section of party leaders, now under Katonga faction, accused party president Patrick Oboi Amuriat and secretary general Nathan Nandala Mafabi of receiving “dirty money” from State House ahead of the 2021 general polls. Mr Amuriat and Mafabi have since denied the allegations and the party is now divided into two factions.