On Friday 20th December
2013, I meet two enthusiastic young FDC and NRM leaning men at Makerere
University who then tell me, "Vincent Nuwagaba,
brilliant as you are, how come you belong to DP which now is clearly a dead
party?" I tell these young men that DP is not dead, Uganda is dead but
with the imminent DP leadership, Uganda will resurrect. In fact, death is not a
bad thing per se because before you die, you cannot resurrect. At least, that
is our belief as Catholics. Death is not the full stop but a comma in the
journey of life. In life, there is no full stop but only commas and
continuations. Death is a preparation for inheritance of eternal life which is
granted to us the believers after resurrection. I tell these young men the
Democratic Party cannot die because it is a spirit. I tell them, you cannot
kill DP; you can only manage to disorganise and inconvenience it for some time.
I added, but even if you disorganise and inconvenience it, the spirit of DP
will come to haunt you and you will regret why you disorganised and inconvenienced
it in the first place. I further tell them, DP and UPC are the only viable
parties we have in Uganda because they have what they stand for - what
political scientists call political ideology. DP stands for justice, it is a
centre-right political party which, although supports the down-trodden also
supports private entrepreneurs. DP is the only party that will not kill
initiative and innovations. DP has no problem with people making money as long
as they are not exploitative and individualistic. In other words, DP is a
liberal political party. I am sure; those who were lucky to study international
politics know quite well the various schools of thought they were exposed to. These
schools of thought include realism, idealism, liberalism, neoliberalism, Marxism
and communism.
Democratic Party is neither socialist nor is it communist. But also, as DP we do not believe in the realism school of thought. Those with very little or no knowledge at all tend to think that realism connotes reality which is not the case. While the Democratic Party is not a socialist political party, we respect socialists and uphold their rights. While the Democratic Party abhors peasantry, we love peasants and work tirelessly to uplift them from peasantry. While we passionately hate poverty, we passionately love the poor for we know they were created by God and it is through loving them that we can liberate them and get them out of poverty. This explains the reason as to why when political parties were officially and legally allowed to sponsor candidates, our presidential candidate Mzee John Ssebana Kizito ran under the banner of “From poverty to prosperity”. Clearly, the Democratic Party is the only party that is deeply concerned about the plight of the underdogs; it is the only clearest and loudest voice of the voiceless, it is the clearest hope of the hopeless and it is ready, willing but also able to deliver real liberation to Uganda – not the imaginary one that was brought by gunmen after murdering thousands in the Luwero Triangle. For the record, media reports show that between 1981 to 1985 when the NRA was fighting, between 800,000 to 1,000,000 (eight hundred thousand to one million) people lost their lives. You may also need to recall that on the burial of Mzee Professor Adonia Tiberondwa, my area Member of Parliament Major General Kahinda Otafiire publicly revealed what was secretly known – that the NRA fighters would wear UNLA uniform, kill civilians to get them angered so they would join them in the bush to fight against Milton Obote’s government.
The Democratic Party has always and remains the champion of fighting for human rights. It has successfully challenged obnoxious laws in the courts of law. It paved way for the return of multipartyism. It remains diametrically opposed to violence and all Machiavellian overtures. To us in the Democratic Party, the end does not justify the means. It is the purity of means that we place at the fore-front. To us in the Democratic Party, our Motto is not the Northcote Motto "We either win or they lose". We do not set out to rule but we set out to serve our nation, our continent and our world. The Democratic Power takes pride in brain power and this explains the reason why we are no longer going to engage the senseless regime on the streets. We know if we do that, the senseless regime will either kill us or kill innocent people who have no interest whatsoever in what the regime does or what we do.
DP is the only fully-fledged accommodating political party and I call upon my brothers Asuman Basalirwa and Odonga Otto to come back home. I also call upon all peace-loving Ugandans to join the Democratic Party, a party with a big heart. We believe in the Democratic Party that our country has enough to satisfy all our appetite but will never have enough to satisfy our greed. We believe that greed is associated with Satan. Greedy politicians like we have in the current regime are demonic, satanic and have to be vehemently ejected.
We also believe that we do not need charity as a society. What we need is justice. We have invested heavily in the accumulation of knowledge and given our superb brains, we are firm and sure that we shall resurrect the Uganda that Yoweri Museveni and his apparatchiks have successfully killed in the past three decades they have accidentally been at the helm. I believe (and this is my personal belief) that the NRM is a historical accident to ever happen to Uganda and that now its leaders are either ghosts or shadows or both. Under the National Resistance Movement, we have witnessed the devaluation of values, the demonization of saints and canonization of demons. We have also witnessed, the dearth, devaluation and death of institutions including but not limited to the death of the Constitution. The Uganda Constitution is not a living document anymore. I may even be wrong to think that the Uganda Constitution has ever been a living document. The Constitution can be used, abused and misused to suit the interests, not of the ruling party but of Yoweri Museveni. Museveni has not only elevated himself into a fully-fledged institution but has turned himself into a state. Now Uganda equals Museveni and Museveni equals Uganda. That is the tragedy, the dilemma and fiasco we find ourselves into. At the moment, prayers cannot work anymore because we seem to have burdened God with prayers yet we do nothing beyond prayers. What works is what we Catholics say, ora et labora which is a Latin phrase meaning that you pray and work. For so long, we have prayed but inadvertently failed or sometimes deliberately refused to work. Today, if we do not want what befell southern sudan to be replicated here. We must pray very hard and work even harder to extricate ourselves from the oppressive, exploitative and discriminatory cabal of rulers who have donated Uganda to themselves. We must reclaim what rightfully belongs to us.
I am now told that the UN
secretary general is courting Yoweri Museveni to intervene in Southern Sudan to
ensure there is peace. My question to Ban Ki Moon and all those who think like
him is, what credentials does Museveni have to restore peace in any country let
alone Southern Sudan? Clearly, if Museveni was not in power, wouldn’t he be
throwing bombs here in town and killing innocent people? I presume he would. He
has killed innocent people before as he fought to capture power, he has killed
innocent people in his quest to consolidate and retain power and he would most
likely kill innocent people in his quest to recapture power if he was ejected. Accordingly,
Museveni is not a peace-maker; he is not a peace lover and is not a peaceful
man. You cannot give what you do not have. Museveni can only give violence
because that is what he has in abundance. He can give vindictiveness, revenge,
retribution and mayhem. Museveni is the worst messenger for a noble cause. I call
upon the UN secretary general to nominate Kofi Annan and Benjamin Mkapa for the
mission of ensuring peace in southern Sudan not Museveni who I am sure must be
taking sides in the whose impasse.
Finally, all the leaders of the
Democratic Party share similar traits: they are all nonviolence, peace-loving,
truthful and above highly thoughtful but also good listeners. These traits have
cut through from Benedicto Kiwanuka, Paulo Ssemogerere together with Mzee
Boniface Byanyima, John Ssebana Kizito and ultimately Norbert Mao. THE
Democratic Party is clearly destined to heal Uganda from spiritual doom, moral
quandary, intellectual dishonesty, mental and moral poverty, and a culture of
violence, dishonesty, pretence and hypocrisy that has been inculcated by the
current crop of political (mis)rulers. Our
patriotic call is to defend truth and propagate justice. Anything that is unjust; we cannot and will
never associate ourselves with it. Long live truth and justice, long live
Uganda.
Mr. Nuwagaba is a human rights
defender, scholar, researcher and life member of the Democratic Party
Contact : +256702843552
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