Prime
On Gen Peter Elwelu’s loose rant and Kasese’s Eliphaz Muhindi
Author: Asuman Bisiika. PHOTO/FILE.
What you need to know:
- If Lt Gen Elwelu must know, the political leadership of this country is engaging with the Kasese community to manage the fallout of the November 2016 incident he gleefully prides himself in. The community in Kasese is working on the darkness brought by that November 2016 day.
On Monday May 17, I was honoured with an invite to witness the swearing in ceremony (on May 19) of Mr Eliphaz Bukombi Muhindi, the brand new district chairperson of Kasese. I was unable to attend the ceremony.
I worked with Mr Muhindi in the department of Public Health of Kasese Town Council (now Kasese Municipality) in the 1980s. I was a health orderly (a U7 salary scale posting) while Mr Muhindi was health assistant (that means he was my superior). Mr Louis Muwhezi Rwasande, the town health inspector (head of our department) is now retired in Mitooma.
But that is not why I regret my failure to attend Mr Muhindi’s swearing-in ceremony. Mr Muhindi is now more than the district chairperson of Kasese; he is the symbol of Kasese’s ‘re-engaging the NRM and Mr Museveni. The people of Kasese have placed a wager (bet) on Mr Museveni and his NRM. But among the NRM candidates at different levels of political leadership contest in Kasese, no one exemplified this ‘Bet-on-Museveni’ than Mr Muhindi.
During the campaign period, Mr Muhindi came to my shrine in Kiburara. I was impressed by his arguments on the need to vote for Museveni and NRM candidates. “My candidature is based on the need to re-engage with the NRM as a party and Mr Museveni as a person. For me, it is about the community. Let us bet on Museveni,” he told me. And a day before he was sworn in, I had a lengthy phone call with him. He went back to his campaign theme of re-engaging NRM and Mr Museveni.
I challenged him that some people say by voting Museveni and NRM, the people of Kasese were appeasing the Museveni junta.
“Well, that which you call the Museveni junta is the legitimate government of Uganda and holds the strings to the national treasury. Asuman, as a community with a long history of marginalisation and recurring armed conflict, the people of Kasese need to have a good relationship with those holding the national wallet. We need development, not politics of identity”.
With Mr Muhindi as the district chairperson, Mr Museveni and his NRM now have where to start when they want to engage the people of Kasese.
But then, there is Lt Gen Peter Elwelu.
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From our base in Kiburara, we will not allow Lt Gen Elwelu’s folksy and provocative talk over the 2016 Kasese Killings go unchallenged. Even the attractive Rebecca Kadaga story will not divert us from the story of a man who was so excited to appear before a camera lens that he forgot to be a service general he is supposed to be.
For a military officer of the General Staff, Peter Elwelu’s loose utterances betrayed his paucity of leadership (military and political) and he should be the subject of disciplinary sanction or peer reprimand.
If Lt Gen Elwelu must know, the political leadership of this country is engaging with the Kasese community to manage the fallout of the November 2016 incident he gleefully prides himself in. The community in Kasese is working on the darkness brought by that November 2016 day.
Mistakes were made. But as a community, we would like to move forward. Please Lt Gen Elwelu, do not provoke us just because you cannot keep calm in the presence of a camera lens.
I don’t want to say a lot about this incident and Lt Gen Elwelu’s recent loose utterances; but I can only speak directly to him in Lingala: nzoi ata epwemba likolo, eyali ndeke te (however much a bee may fly, it will never be a bird).
