Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) presidential candidate Major General (rtd) Mugisha Muntu has suspended his campaigns in protest against police actions, which he describes as brutal.
According to Gen. Muntu, he will resume the campaigns after the police begin respecting Ugandans and protecting their lives.
Gen. Muntu’s resolve comes in the wake of a fracas in Rukungiri last Wednesday, when police disrupted his rival Patrick Amuriat Obol’s political rally and in the ensuing chaos one Edson Nasasira, died. At the time Obol was in the company of former FDC presidential flag bearer Dr. Kizza Besigye and the party Secretary for Mobilisation Ingrid Turinawe.
“There was no rational reason why police could act the way they did yet the rally was planned and communicated to police, they would have engaged Dr. Besigye or Amuriat in a professional and dignifying manner rather than unleashing terror upon innocent civilians that hat gathered in accordance with the law to exercise their freedom,” Gen. Muntu wrote in letter to his followers carried on his Twitter account.
He added: “The state has always wanted to divide opposition and destruct their focus of ending President Museveni’s unjust, selfish, ill-advised bid for life president.”
Further, according to Muntu, the actions of government will amount to naught.
“President Museveni and your enablers we are seeing what you are trying to do, you will not succeed in sowing seeds of division among the pro-change in the country. No amount of intimidation and coercive force will succeed in the face of people united by decades of incompetence, mismanagement, corruption and inequality,” Gen. Muntu added.
A bush war veteran and former Army Commander, Gen Muntu is one of the opposition leaders that has consistently criticized the National Resistance Movement (NRM) regime.
And today he was one of the opposition leaders who visited incarcerated Dr. Besigye and Ms. Turinawe at Naggalama police station, where the two have been jailed since Thursday last week, in connection with Mr. Edson Nasasira’s death.
