Rubaga North: How love of federo blunts NRM’s hopes

Before joining the Rubaga North parliamentary race, Mr Kawalya was a councillor for Rubaga North. He had a fallout with his party, the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) over his decision to vie for the speakership.

The FDC and Mr Erias Lukwago, the Kampala lord mayor, had fronted Makerere University councillor Doreen Nyanjura, but Mr Kawalya defied them. He allied with National Resistance Movement (NRM) and won the speakership. In this deal, Mr Bruhan Byaruhanga, an NRM councillor, became the deputy speaker while Mr Kawalya became the speaker.

The allegations that Mr Kawalya was in bed with the NRM didn’t stop NUP under the leadership of Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, alias Bobi Wine, from welcoming him into the nascent party. But during the entire campaign, Mr Kasibante branded Mr Kawalya a fifth columnist—essentially an enemy within who was doing the bidding of the NRM.

Mr Kasibante fortified his campaign on grounds that he was facing two NRM candidates —Mr Kawalya and then Lands minister Beti Kamya, who was the NRM’s flag bearer in the race.

“Voters have to be sophisticated and understand that NRM has this time set up an overt trap, who is Ms Kamya, and a covert one who is Mr Kawalya. They are free to receive the state money these two will bring but should continue to side with the forces of change which I represent,” Kasibante said.

Kasibante ousted

During the campaigns, Mr Kasibante had tried to market himself as one of the MPs who stood up to be counted when the NRM successfully pushed for the upper and lower caps on presidential age limits to be removed from the Constitution. At the height of the debate two explosives ripped through Mr Kasibante’s house hours after he had been set free from police custody where he had been detained over engaging in a so-called Tojikwatako rally.

“At slightly after 2am, two deafening blasts went off at different intervals. It was terrifying. We knew it was our last day of living. It seemed like the assailants who threw the explosive were outside the perimeter fence as the guard didn’t see anyone inside by the time of the attack. But footmarks were visible outside. There were dark sunglasses left outside,” Mr Kasibante said.

 Mr Kasibante would go on to poll third in the race, with 8,032 votes. Mr Kawalya, with 39,847 votes, was the runaway winner. Ms Kamya got 14, 003 votes to place second. Mr Kawalya, like many NUP first-term lawmakers, has struggled to assert himself both within Parliment and outside it. His only significant contribution on the floor of Parliament came last year when he ganged up with other Kampala lawmakers to issue an ultimatum over the poor state of Kampala roads.

“We shall not sit down and see all these challenges. We are giving [Kampala Capital City Authority] an ultimatum of a maximum of two weeks to work on most of the challenges that have affected our people, most especially when it comes to flooding. We all know what causes flooding, the status and quality of our drainage is in a bad state,” Mr Kawalya said, adding that he wasn’t happy with the Shs10 billion that was allocated to KCCA for the maintenance of city roads because “Kampala contributes the biggest percentage of taxes and therefore deserves better than the crumbs they are receiving from the government”.

Love for federalists

Although Mr Kawalya is struggling to at least show his position ideologically. Rubaga North has in the past years always been represented by people who claim to be federalists. Rubaga North hosts the Buganda Kingdom’s headquarters at Mengo and its constituents align themselves with people who hold the kingdom’s interests dear, including a federal system. It is no wonder the people of the constituency voted for a renowned federalist in Mr Wasswa Lule to represent them in the Constituent Assembly (CA) which midwifed the current Constitution.

Rubaga North would send Mr Lule, son of former president Yusuf Kironde Lule, to the Sixth Parliament where he continued to make a case for a federal system of government and demilitarising Uganda’s politics.

Yet in 2001 the NRM’s Tom Kayongo upset the applecart when he turned the constituency yellow. The Opposition blamed the loss on many Opposition candidates, including Ms Kamya, the current ombudsman who stood under the framework of the Reform Agenda and had vied for the position.

Mr Kayongo didn’t do himself any favour as he turned out to be one of the worst performers in Parliament. So poor was the performance that he couldn’t freely interact with his voters by the end of his term. In fact, in 2003, three voters, who turned out to be Mr Kayongo’s former polling agents, petitioned the Parliament Speaker saying they wanted to recall the lawmaker on grounds that he had long abandoned the constituency.

While the petition did not achieve much, Rubaga North constituents had the last laugh in 2006 when they voted for another federalist in Ms Kamya who stood on the FDC ticket. It looked as if Kamya was going to make this constituency her own until she fell out with FDC, formed her own Uganda Federal Alliance (UFA) and decided to run for the presidency in 2011.

This allowed Rubaga North to once again select a new face and this came in the battle between Mr Kasibante—an independent who was supported by a pressure group known as Ssuubi that championed Ganda interests such as federo—and NRM’s Singh Marwah Katongole.

Mr Kasibante was first declared winner having garnered 24,054 votes (45.36 percent of the vote), with Singh’s 18,595 votes securing second position. However, Mr Kasibante’s celebrations were short-lived because following protests from Mr Katongole, the Mengo Chief Magistrate Court controversially ordered a recount in which the latter was declared the winner. This was despite the fact that there was a High Court injunction stopping the recount.

Justice Musoke-Kibuuka, who has since passed on, later gave a landmark judgment in which he ordered that Mr Kasibante go to Parliament without going through a by-election.

“It is notable, from the evidence on record, that because the chief magistrate abdicated his jurisdiction, he never issued any certificate of the recount to the returning officer. He could not do so because he never sat in a court to carry out the recount. The returning officer, as she states, in her affidavit, carried out the recount and announced the results. This particular aspect too rendered the recount more illegal,” Justice Musoke-Kibuka ruled.

He added: “The returning officer, according to the law, only waits for the results of the recount which comes to him or her in the form of a certificate of recount. That certificate should indicate the changes if any, in the results earlier tallied by the returning officer. In the instant case, the returning officer even purported to carry out a second tallying. She purported to reverse the flow of the electoral process backwards to the tallying process again. The electoral process flows like a river. It never turns back.”

The ruling handed Mr Kasibante his first term in the House and he went ahead to get a second term having defeated Ms Kamya, who despite standing on the UFA ticket was projected as an NRM candidate.

Kawalya vs Mubiru?

Having been defeated in 2021 and retreated into commercial farming, it is not clear if Mr Kasibante will once again challenge Mr Kawalya for the seat. What is clear is that with many people in Buganda still wanting to tap into the popularity of NUP, Mr Kawalya could face an old nemesis in the form of a member of NUP— Mr James Mubiru.

In 2020, Mr Mubiru wanted the NUP ticket for the 2021 elections but Mr Kawalya’s war chest saw him eat humble pie. Mr Mubiru had to make do with contesting for the right to represent the constituency as a councillor at city hall.

By the time the elections came around, Mr Mubiru was among the NUP activists who had been charged at the General Court Martial for allegedly unlawfully being in possession of military uniform. Being incarcerated didn’t stop Mr Mubiru from being elected. He was released in August 2021 long after elected officials had been sworn into office.

Mr Mubiru has already pinned up posters across Rubaga North that unequivocally state that Kawalya doesn’t deserve another term since he allegedly has not effectively represented the constituency.

With Kamya still holding the role of the government ombudsman, it remains to be seen which candidate the ruling party will front in an area that many observers reckon will turn its back on the NRM.

FEDERAL SYSTEM

Rubaga North has in the past years always been represented by people who claim to be federalists. Rubaga North hosts the Buganda Kingdom’s headquarters at Mengo and its constituents align themselves with people who hold the kingdom’s interests dear, including a federal system.