Four-time former presidential candidate Dr. Kizza Besigye has called for the stay of internal elections in the opposition Forum for Democratic Change-FDC party.
Speaking to the press at his Katonga Road-based office today, Besigye said if the party doesn’t first sort out its disagreements, it risks traveling the path that parties such as the Democratic Party and the Uganda People’s Congress have traveled.
Both DP and UPC have agreed to a working relationship with the ruling National Resistance Movement led by President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni.
Disagreements within the FDC came to the fore on Monday when a group of senior members convened what they called a consultative meeting in which they accused the party President Patrick Amuriat Oboi and Secretary General Nandala Mafabi of accepting money from Museveni that was used in the 2021 general elections.
Besigye who has also been accused by the Amuriat’s camp of interfering in the running of the party, said there is a need to first have harmony before the party can hold internal elections.
Besigye said it is also wrong for anyone to purport to be organizing an election when the committee that was constituted to look into the disagreements in the party has not yet produced its report.
On the issue of money, Besigye revealed that he got to know in 2020 that party leaders had got money from questionable sources.
Besigye said he wanted to come out and expose the party leaders but he was held back after some colleagues appealed to him that his coming out would affect their electability.
Besigye said it was this money that influenced his decision to stay away from campaigning for the FDC flagbearer Patrick Amuriat Oboi.
He said it couldn’t sit well with him to campaign using Museveni’s money.
Besigye also said that he started observing money being used in internal FDC elections and he wanted to raise it but received pushback.
Meanwhile, Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) president Patrick Amuriat has distanced himself from claims that he received money from the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) party to fund their 2021 elections.
Amuriat explained that the party did not receive the money from President Museveni as alleged by top FDC officials led by party spokesperson Ibrahim Ssemujju Nganda.
Ssemujju and other party officials claim that their Secretary-General Nandala Mafabi and Amuriat received the said money and part of it was used to buy brand new vehicles.
Addressing journalists today, Amuriat said the allegations were first made in 2020 by FDC founding president, Dr. Kizza Besigye who said he had intelligence that they were picking money from the ‘junta’.
Amuriat told journalists that the only money they got from the government was through the Electoral Commission as provided in the Constitution.
He says the other money came from some of their funders who asked not to be named.
