President Museveni on Friday found himself in the middle of a political ambush in Masaka, when the municipality MP Mathias Mpuuga dragged him into a heated exchange over the government’s anti-poverty programmes.
Before an audience that turned up for the commissioning of the newly-constructed Shs13 billion market at Nyendo in Masaka Municipality, Mpuuga openly criticised NRM’s flagship project, Operation Wealth Creation (OWC), which he said was unlikely to get people out of poverty.
“As a leader, I don’t understand it when I see OWC trucks bringing orange seedlings to Masaka. You can’t fight poverty in Masaka by promoting the growing of lime and tangerine. Traditionally, we plant such on the boundaries of our gardens for the children to eat,” Mpuuga said.
The country was divided into 10 agricultural production zones during the 2008/09 financial after government developed the Prosperity for All (Bonna bagaggawale) framework.
The zoning was intended to provide information and guidance for agricultural investment to local governments and individual farmers, but Mpuuga said NRM vulgarised the programme.
“I was planning to notify the Speaker of Parliament about a petition against this [OWC] project… About 10 years ago, Uganda was divided into agricultural production zones but I don’t remember seeing Masaka in the zones for growing citrus fruits,” the opposition MP said.
The agricultural production zones were re-confirmed in the National Agricultural Policy, developed in July 2011. However, according to Mpuuga, the plan misallocated resources to Masaka which was a coffee and banana growing area.
“When you came in the 1980s you didn’t find orange stores in Masaka. This place is a known coffee and banana-growing area. The money you waste on OWC should instead be spent on helping farmers to fight the [banana] wilt disease that is eating up their plantations,” he said.
Mpuuga’s blunt speech excited the crowd. Some people in the largely NRM gathering clapped and cheered on the MP who went as far as reminding the president about the activities of his NRA guerrillas that looted Masaka cooperative Union.
“In 1986, Masaka’s economy was flourishing because of the cooperative societies. It is surprising, Mr President, that while you have compensated the other cooperative societies, Masaka Cooperative Union, which was the biggest contributor to your [rebel] activities because it gave you cash and cars, has been left out,” Mpuuga said.
DEBT BURDEN
While earlier speakers sung praises to Museveni for the construction of the market that will accommodate 2500 vendors, Mpuuga’s message was different.
The Democratic Party (DP) politician told the vendors that instead of singing the president’s praises, they should look at it as an addition to the country’s debt burden.
“While it is true that this is a government programme, we borrowed this money through Parliament and all of us, including our grandchildren, will have to pay back this money. It is not his [Museveni] personal donation,” he said.
Mpuuga’s persistent challenge to Museveni caused discomfort among the presidential protocol staff that had earlier wanted to strike the MP off the list of speakers at the function. In the past, State House would exclude Mpuuga and ask the district Woman MP to speak in the slot allocated to the area legislator.
However, this time round, this trick became difficult to deploy since all the Masaka MPs, except the Vice President Edward Kiwanuka Ssekandi, belong to DP.
Mpuuga and the State House team were involved in an exchange in which he told them that while they had the capacity to deny him an opportunity to speak, he had the ability to disorganise the event. It took the intervention of Local Government minister Tom Butime for Mpuuga to get the go-ahead to speak at the event.
After the re-admission of his speech, Butime then engaged Mpuuga asking him not to embarrass the president. Organisers had in mind Mpuuga’s role in the Walk-to-work protests that followed the 2011 elections, and being that this was the first time Museveni and Mpuuga were appearing at a public event in the Municipality, a stingy attack on the was expected.
MUSEVENI REBUTTAL
True to their fears, Mpuuga succeeded in diverting Museveni from his prepared speech. The president instead spent most of his time rebutting the opposition MP’s statements.
“It seems that this boy [Mpuuga] is out of touch with reality, but it is good that he has made [his] lies in my presence and therefore I have chance to respond,” Museveni said.
“He [Mpuuga] is only good at making fun of and ridiculing operation wealth creation. He doesn’t know that in some parts of Masaka like in Kyannamukaaka, pineapples do well. He only stops on the tarmac,” Museveni added.
The president defended his four-acre-model of farming, which he said is the best approach to household poverty. At some point, Museveni admitted that Mpuuga whom he frequently called a boy, had got some facts right. However, the president claimed that Mpuuga’s politics had been spoilt by the political ideology that DP follows.
“I was also in the DP, and our DP was strong and powerful under Ben Kiwanuka not this current weak DP under [Norbert] Mao where this boy and [Bukoto East MP Florence] Namayanja spend most of the time criticising me,” Museveni said. Â
sadabkk@observer.ug