President Yoweri Museveni has urged Ugandans to treat murder, promotion of any form of sectarianism and maintaining backwardness.
President Museveni, who is on a four-day working visit in Rwenzori region, made the remarks while meeting leaders of Bughendera county in Bundibugyo district today at Fort Portal State Lodge.
President Museveni said that the National Resistance Movement has always opposed sectarianism and extrajudicial murders and warned that the government will not tolerate those promoting the two vices.
“Sectarianism, extrajudicial murders and backwardness have been Movement taboos and anyone promoting them today is our number one enemy. I was in the Democratic Party but I had to leave the party because the party exercised sectarianism and I left to join the Uganda People’s Congress but sectarianism had done great damage to the country that the post independence government collapsed four years after independence,” he said.
He said that the Movement will not therefore discuss matters of extrajudicial murder with criminals but will have to handle them in accordance with the law.
Museveni expressed disappointment that Ugandans and the Movement is degenerating from the core principles on which the National Resistance Movement was founded.
“Issues of criminality and murder are resolved by the constitution of Uganda and even God’s laws are against murder. I think we misled you by being too soft on some of you who made mistakes in the past but we thought some of you were committing crimes out ignorance but I think it has gone out of hand. How do you kill someone for voting in a certain way? Then what is democracy for and what did the NRM fight for? ” he said.
The President said they will deal with the criminals decisively.
“We shall deal with them decisively. We have done it Karamoja against the advice of the opposition politicians who said that we should talk to the Karamajong cattle rustlers who were killing people. We must make it clear that killing in Uganda is out of question,” the President said.
He also warned against mixing traditional and cultural leadership with political leadership and administrations, saying some of the problems in the Rwenzori region are because some players are mixing the two.
He said that although the NRM government allowed the reinstatement of cultural institutions in parts of Uganda they must operate in accordance with the Constitution.
