In the aftermath of the deadly November 27 army attack on the palace of Omusinga wa Rwenzururu Charles Wesley Mumbere, Maj Gen Mugisha Muntu, the FDC president and former army commander, has suggested that the officers who led the attack should have defied President Museveni’s order because it was illegal.
Speaking to Baker Batte Lule in an interview on Tuesday at his party’s headquarters in Najjanankumbi, Muntu said since no one has been arrested so far for what he calls the army’s reckless actions that killed more than 60 people, that means the attack on the palace was ordered by the president. Below are excerpts.
Tell me about the current nation-wide training of FDC leaders.
Currently, we are engaged in workshops that we have organized in 15 sub-regions. We have so far done three sub-regions; Masaka, Mbarara and Jinja. Next we are going to Gulu, Mbale, Tororo and then Moroto and Kotido until we finish all the 15 sub-regions.
We should have held these conferences like in April, May or June but because of the hostile conditions we faced [we failed]. Our headquarter was shut down.
We were also involved in activities that attracted the attention of the country and the international community about an election [February 2016] that had just been stolen.
We were not able to focus on the [trainings]; so, we held them late but the purpose is to review the electoral process of 2016 and we intend to build it as part of the organizational culture so that whenever there is an election, we do a review whether it is a general or by-election. It helps us to focus on our areas of strength and weaknesses and then we work to strengthen ourselves where we are weak.
The other part of it is the training in conflict prevention and management and resolution. We intend to have that as a focal area of training on a continuous basis so that leaders at all levels get the skills.
We realized that the problem this country has faced over the years is that conflicts emerge because some inexperienced leaders do not know how to detect conflict and manage it when it happens.
Where do you get money to fund these activities?
We have had funding from international organizations, which have been focusing on party development activities. It is not only us they have helped; they have been working with various parties. But it also depends on the area of focus for each party.
You talk about an election that was rigged; and your party claims it won the 2016 election. What do you base on to say that?
We were monitoring the whole process and we were able to know in areas where we had declaration of results Forms(DR forms) and even in areas where only one set of DR forms was given.
When eventually the results were announced, they were different from those announced at the polling stations. Other areas like Nyabushozi where they chased our polling agents, we could clearly see the outcome even in places where more people voted than those on the register.
That’s why when we made a press statement two days after the election, we demanded for an independent body to audit the election. The regime has of course been adamant, which is absolutely amazing because if they wanted credibility; if they were sure of the results that were announced, they would have been the first to agree to an audit.
But of course I’m not surprised because they knew what was going to be uncovered.
There was talk that FDC would not appoint opposition leaders in parliament but people were surprised when you appointed them.
No; there was just general debate but it was not something we took seriously within the party. But this was not the first time. We have had similar situations in 2006 and 2011. There were people who raised that argument.
But every time the party would sit to discuss all those [arguments], we said no, this is a struggle. Once you have gained any foothold maintain that foothold, and then increase territory until you capture the whole territory you want. You cannot capture some territory and then surrender it; that would be absolutely a wrong approach to the struggle.
There is a general perception you are not an enthusiastic supporter of the defiance campaign led by your former presidential candidate.
I don’t know how people read enthusiasm because from 18th February when we were shut down until May after the stage-managed swearing in at Kololo when Museveni’s coup eventually came to a conclusion, I was here at the headquarter.
The decisions were made by the party organs and I’m the one who was chairing those meetings. We set up a committee to conduct those [defiance] activities, which reports to us and we make decisions. That’s how I operate, in an organized way, through structures and institutions. Maybe the only thing they talk about is that they don’t see me on the streets.
But I don’t need to be on the streets for me to participate because decisions are very critical in building the necessary institutions and for the party to be able to do what it does. [On the] 5th of May, we called for demonstrations all over the country.
The demonstrations were dispersed in many parts of the country. To me it was very important that we do a review of what impediments we faced and we keep on building ourselves as an organization.
So, I keep on hearing that sentiment but I don’t let it bother me because without building strong institutions, how do you become effective in whatever you choose to do? As far as I’m concerned, cohesion and managing internal contradictions is very important because you can go in battle but if you don’t have a trained, disciplined force and you meet a smaller force which is trained and disciplined, it will disperse you.
But that is an area that generates a lot of controversy and I can understand people’s frustrations. But while people can easily get frustrated, leaders can’t afford to get frustrated. So, we have to keep focused on doing things that are necessary to keep building the capability needed by the organization in whatever area of endeavor that we get involved in.
With the clampdown [on demos], do you think the defiance campaign can achieve its desired goals?
Any area of the struggle you are involved in, whatever impediments you meet, you just don’t surrender. You continue studying why you are not making the impact you expected to make.
You find out the nature of the challenge and how to respond and, therefore, keep on building where you find a weakness. You strengthen yourself where there is an impediment and work towards overcoming it.
Your party is currently involved in fundraising for the reopening of Makerere University, collecting relief items for the hunger-stricken communities, then training national leaders and others. Aren’t these too many activities?
There are of course activities, which are programmed to be done on a sustained basis like this programme [training of leaders] we are doing. It’s one phase that leads to another.
Nevertheless, in a political life of the country, there are things that emerge. For example, nobody would have anticipated famine. That is not something you would have planned for but when it happens, you have to work on a response.
There are also activities that are broader than the party, which we collaborate at times. We put in whatever efforts we can. For example, the closure of Makerere was broader than the party; so, it needs a broad coalition of forces. Nobody would have anticipated the strike but once it happens, there are responses from different organizations and actors, which is in order.
That; your detractors call it populism, they say you want to be everywhere and end up being nowhere.
You don’t listen to detractors in life. When you believe in something and have thought it through and believe it is something that needs to be done, do it; don’t worry about what people say about it. If it is effective after the passage of time even if not on a large scale, the cumulative effect of it will be seen over time.
You have been four years as FDC president, what are your major challenges so far?
The biggest challenge we have, not only as an organization but the country as a whole, broadly speaking, is having an environment that is not conducive for doing anything about building systems and ensuring that good governance is practiced.
It is a contestation between two different forces; there is a force that believes that if you have power, you can do whatever you want and you don’t have to account.
That is what the regime wants but on our side, we have to keep working to ensure that we do whatever is humanly possible to ensure that we change that reality we are living under.
We want to keep on working to eliminate that power structure and put in place a new political dispensation. So, we work towards bringing down the current power structure and replace it with something better.
Any successes so far?
I believe we have registered some success although it might not be quantifiable. Some of the things are not tangible. It’s like you can’t see a flower opening up but every time you wake up in the morning you find it [has] opened but you can’t see it opening with your eyes unless maybe you are permanently focused on it.
But the political consciousness of the population is changing; the desire for change is getting stronger and stronger. So, we have to design ways of tapping [into] that desire for change.
Are we seeing you on the ballot (FDC presidency) in 2017?
My main focus right now is to ensure that we get out of an electoral period; focus the party on building cohesion and when the time comes for competition, everybody who wants to compete, will.
Dr Besigye has complained about moles; is it something that affects you?
Moles can’t be effective unless they cause instability within an organization. As far as I’m concerned, the only thing the moles will do is leak information.
But we are not a military formation that we fear that any leaked information will be detrimental to us. The only area you have to ensure you protect yourself is if they become agents of instability within an organization. That also depends on your management capabilities with the organization.If you have got the capability to neutralize that, then you don’t even have to worry about that.
Because you ensure that you will neutralize all actions that will lead to instability within the party. Whether they are deliberate and conscious like those who are possibly fifth columnists or those sent in by the adversary.
Or even neutralize any tendencies that can cause instability even if they are not generated by moles but because of inexperience or people who can’t manage them- selves.
To me, what the party has to focus on fundamentally is train leaders to know how to manage all those kinds of challenges and ensure that you create an internal environment that maintains stability and creates harmony within an organization.
You were in the military for some good time, how best would the standoff in Kasese have been handled without resulting in deaths?
The one thing I want to isolate in this whole thing of Kasese is the political issues. We need to deal with them as political issues that need to be resolved. Social, political, cultural issues have got a history and they can only be solved politically through dialogue.
There have been many reports written about them and you may not need any new report. You just need to put together reports that have been written over a period of time; comprehend them; crystallize the salient issues and then subject them to an honest dialogue between the regime, the leaders and other actors.
That also includes the genesis of the recent violent clashes starting with elections onwards until this point in time. That can be done if there is willingness and honesty on the side of the regime. However, the only issue that also needs to be looked at is the recent attack on the palace.
That one, I look at in a military-security perspective. This regime had the capability to establish a security presence around the palace and had the capability to ensure that nobody gets in, nobody gets out –whether it took one day, two days or three, to resolve, if at all there was some standoff because the regime tries to make it seem as if there was a standoff.
The other side of the Omusinga says no they were ready to surrender; to me that is not the issue.
But I can’t understand why there was haste at that point in time and I’m really waiting for someone to convincingly tell me that. We also discuss whether there were camps and trainees in those camps and who trained them.
I don’t want to give an opinion because I don’t have the knowledge; those can be investigated. But the attack on Kasese palace, someone must have given an order; so, whoever gave the order must explain to us why they hurried.
There was no possibility that any force could have broken in and attacked the forces around the palace and overwhelmed them. There was no such possibility in any case when they eventually attacked the palace; the re- ports indicated that they [royal guards] had only seven AK47s.
There was no external force that had the capacity to go and overwhelm the army and the police that had surrounded that place; so, why hurry and kill so many unarmed people? To me that is the main question.
If there is no justification for that haste then it points us to the mindset of those who were conducting that operation. They are people who don’t care about people dying but they wanted to make a point that, look, you cannot challenge the regime.
That is a dangerous mindset; it signals arrogance and a sense of impunity that if you are in state power, you can do anything and nobody is going to do anything.
That is not only dangerous for the people who were killed but also to the whole country because it means they can apply it anywhere like they have been doing before. In a military operation there are people fighting on both sides and you cannot control the manner in which the engagement is done.
Someone may shoot at you as he is running. But when there is an enclosure which is surrounded, that is a different situation all together. That palace was totally under the control of the forces that had besieged it; so, whoever made the decision to attack must clearly know in his or her mind that they simply committed murder.
You have been a commander of the UPDF, in the military who gives that order?
It can be the commander on the ground but if there was a commander who made that decision on the ground in view of the recklessness, we would have seen someone being questioned.
I don’t think the regime would sit back and doesn’t act. That they are not acting means the order must have come directly from the commander in chief. Otherwise if it had come from the middle level I suspect we would have seen commanders being arrested. We are waiting to see what happened.
I’m waiting to hear any justification for the order that was given to attack and overwhelm that group [royal guards] which in terms of correlation of forces literary is like using a sledge hammer to kill a fly. If a commander is arrested and charged then we will know that the commander misjudged or was reckless. Short of that then we will know that it came right from the top.
In case the order came from the top does the commander on the ground take some responsibility for his actions?
The only action he should have taken was to refuse the order; of course this would have had its own consequences; he would have been arrested but this means that he would be ready to take that as well; yes there is always that option.
Your party has said it is taking the case to the International Criminal Court, do you have the locus standi to do that?
I think it’s the lawyers that will study that whole situation and be able to guide us in whatever actions that would be taken.
You were still part of the Movement when you restored these kingdoms. Do you agree with the notion that it was a mistake?
Kingdoms can exist if there is democratic governance; everybody will do whatever they want. Mostly, if there are honest channels of communication and systems of resolving conflicts.
There is no society where you won’t find contradictions, the only difference is that there are those who have experience in managing those contradictions.
That’s where the failure is; the problem is not cultural leaders because they are now a reality they are here, so you need to manage the conditions in the whole country. Any organization can become a source of conflict if not well managed.
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