Kampala-The Democratic Alliance (TDA) may have to contend with the pressures of a troubled political terrain after opposition politician Norbert Mao warned members of the pressure group against hobnobbing with embattled politician, Lord Mayor Erias Lukwago.
According to Mao, who is the Democratic Party President, the TDA should not allow Lukwago, the leader of a DP splinter group into the alliance.
Mr Mao claimed the alliance risked collapse if Lukwago, whose intentions are allegedly to destroy the DP, was allowed to associate with the pressure group.
Under the guise of a ‘delegates conference’, yesterday Lukwago in the company of MPs Mathias Mpuuga (Masaka Municipality), Latif Ssebagala (Kawempe North) and Richard Ssebuliba Mutumba (Kawempe South) convened a meeting at Bativa Hotel, where they distanced themselves from all the activities of the Mao faction of DP, including the party Delegates Conference slated for Thursday, July 23.
“The agenda of this splinter group may be the deal breaker of the TDA; if the TDA allow the splinter DP into the alliance, DP will move out of it,” Mao told journalists at the party headquarters today.
Mr. Mao revealed that the reconciliation talks had failed to bear fruit because those against his leadership objected to his ideas.
“I’m tired of arguing with idiots, you cannot reason with unreasonable people,” Mao said adding: “He (Lukwago) does not know what he wants and from now on we are going to handle him with an iron fist.”
Unleashing a tinge of sarcasm, the DP leader said that the Lord Mayor did not have the knowledge and experience to rule the 30 million Ugandans because he was impeached by (only) thirty Kampala City Council Authority (KCCA) councilors.
Mao also noted that for one to stand as a candidate in TDA, he or she has to be endorsed by his faction of the party.
A longtime DP activist, Lukwago is not new to controversy, something that has occasionally put him on a collision course with the mainstream DP. In 2010, Lukwago broke ranks with the mainstream DP and joined a pressure group called Suubi, which he used as a vehicle to be elected the Lord Mayor in 2011.
But likening Lukwago’s current position to that of the former DP presidential aspirant Al Hajji Nasser Ntege Ssebagala, Mao noted it was under Lukwago’s counsel as the party lawyer that the former city mayor was kicked out of the party.
Mao said that Lukwago had advised that since Sebaggala had contested as an Independent in the 2010 elections, he was no longer a party member.
“That advice has caught up with him,” Mao stressed and warned Lukwago’s sympathizers to desist from supporting him since it would only give President Yoweri Museveni an edge in the 2016 elections.
And, speaking about the elections and formation of the ‘new party’, Mr. Mao pointed out that the Bativa meeting was not a Delegates Conference (DC), and that the recommendations made there were not binding. “The delegates have the intelligence to choose who their leaders should be, the DP Constitution is non-negotiable,” Mao said and refuted claims that the DC had been cancelled.
“There’s no compromise on the Delegates Conference, it will be held on the set date,” he said and added that this year’s DC will host 1723 delegates, 1240 men and 483 women.
“All these are genuine members of DP, not boda bodariders picked from Arua Park,” he charged.
