The Democratic Party (DP) has reacted to the recent reshuffles that saw several officers who participated in the bush war replaced with what has been termed as the new breed of officers.

Speaking today at a weekly media briefing at their offices, the DP said the reshuffle is a sign of mistrust and panic.

“The recent army reshuffles have raised eyebrows. The President seems to think the country needs new blood in places like the army but excludes himself from letting go. The appointment and promotion of Brig. Peter Elwelu was like a slap in the face to those who think Elwelu is a war criminal deserving trial for crimes against humanity,” said DP spokesperson Kenneth Paul Kakande.

Kakande also took swipe at the reassignment of first son Major General Muhoozi Kainerugaba as a presidential advisor, saying he is not experienced enough to handle such a portfolio.

“We also note the positioning of his son in an advisory role yet such an advisory role ought to fall to a person with years of experience and a rise on merit based on competence. We wonder whether his son would be where he is if it were not that his father is Commander in Chief. The placing of one region in command positions in this reshuffle also takes away the lie that the initial historical formation of the original NRA was for the most Western dominated and thus their being all over the place. But even the new blood is proving to be favouring the same region with the Elwerus just being used to do the donkey work and dirty jobs.”

In relation to the allegations of favouring one region, Kakande added that tribalism was at its peak again “but this is dangerous to the future stability of this country”.

“We continue to note the manifestation of tribal tendencies in Uganda,” Kakande said, citing names. He singled out for mention Chief Justice Bart Katureebe; Prime Minister Rukahana Rugunda; Attorney General William Byaruhanga, Chief of Defense Forces General David Muhoozi; the Inspector General of Police General Kale Kayihura), Commissioner General of Prison Services Johnson Byabashaija, the Director of Traffic Police Steven Kasiima; the Governor Bank of Uganda Emmanuel Mutebile and Finance Minister Matia Kasaija.

“There are also so many Directors of Parastatals and junior officers coming from the same region which is deeply troubling. We do think that this is too dangerous to the future stability of this country. What is surprising is that those who point out these sectarian and nepotistic painting are the ones who the tribalists accuse of being tribal. With the outbursts following the murder of Charles Akena and the friction between Akena’s relatives and the Byanyimas, we can say God save Uganda!” Kakande said.

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The Gambia’s ministers for finance, foreign affairs, trade and the environment have resigned from President Yahya Jammeh’s government.

The resignations were announced today, less than a day after the country’s Chief Justice Emmanuel Fagbenle pulled out of a case filed by Jammeh seeking to stop the inauguration of President-elect Adama Barrow.

Fagbenle said late on Monday that he could not hear the new case, dealing a blow to Jammeh’s efforts to halt the inauguration of Barrow, who remains in Senegal.

The inauguration is scheduled for Thursday, when Barrow is expected to return from Senegal.

“Given that the injunction affects me in my capacity as the chief justice, I will recuse myself from hearing it,” he said.

“The motion therefore waits for the constitution of the Supreme Court or allow the judges to arrive in The Gambia.”

Edward Gomez, a lawyer for Jammeh’s party, conceded that it was “certainly not possible under these circumstances” to have an injunction barring Barrow from being sworn in.

On Tuesday, Morocco’s Foreign Minister Salaheddine Mezouar and a top secret service official arrived in The Gambian capital Banjul to hold talks with Jammeh, Al Jazeera’s Nicolas Haque reported from neighbouring Senegal.

There have been talks of a possible asylum or exile for Jammeh to an African country, in exchange for him stepping down.

Jammeh has lodged a challenge to the election result with The Gambia’s Supreme Court and last week filed a fresh injunction to prevent the chief justice from swearing Barrow into office.The small West African country has been plunged into political turmoil since Jammeh disputed Barrow’s December election victory and refused to cede power.

Last week the Supreme Court said Jammeh’s challenge to the election result could not be heard for several months as it did not have a full bench, and the extra judges needed to hear the case were not available.

The Gambia relies on foreign judges, notably from Nigeria, to staff its courts due to a lack of its own trained professionals.

With tensions running high, Jammeh said on Sunday that he had spoken to Liberian leader Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and was adamant he would not budge until the Supreme Court had heard his challenge to the poll result.

“The so-called deadline of January 19, 2017, is not cast in stone and all parties shall await the outcome of the Supreme Court,” he said on state television.

Leaders of neighbouring countries and the Economic Community of West African States, or ECOWAS, have repeatedly called on the long-serving strongman to leave office peacefully, so far to no avail.

As well as Sirleaf, Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari and Ghana’s President John Mahama, who left office 10 days ago, have appealed to Jammeh to step down twice in person, without success, most recently on Friday.

Barrow was the surprise guest at a Bamako summit over the weekend, where he was welcomed as a head of state and introduced to several world leaders.

On Sunday, a personal tragedy struck his family when his eight-year-old son Habibou died after being bitten by dogs, according to a family source.

The prospect of military intervention in The Gambia has even been floated in recent days, following declarations by the United Nations and African Union that boots on the ground could get the green light without a rapid resolution of the crisis.

The head of the UN Office for West Africa and the Sahel said on Friday that ECOWAS would ask the Security Council to approve the deployment of troops to The Gambia if Jammeh continues to refuse to leave office.

On Friday, it was reported that the Nigerian military issued a memo to prepare 800 soldiers for a possible deployment in Gambia. There have also been reports that the Nigerian military has sought training and logistical support from British advisers before any military intervention.

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As Burundi threatens to pull out over five thousand peacekeepers from Somalia, the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) has asked member states for at least 9 000 more troops to enhance peacekeeping and stabilisation operations as well as intensifying the fight against the Islamist Al Shabaab insurgency.

Addressing delegates to a recent meeting held in Mogadishu, the Somalia Special Representative of the Chairperson of the African Union (AU) Commission Ambassador Francisco Madeira said the viability of AMISOM was under threat from lack of financial and logistic support as well as the withdrawal of up to 10 000 troops by the end of 2017.

Madeira said presently, the under-funded AU force faced critical shortages of both military and civilian staff while working under pressure to conclude the training, equipment and deployment of a 20 000-member strong Somali National Army (SNA) before it starts a phased withdrawal from the country next year.

He said due to the shortage of funds and logistical support from international partners, AMISOM has only trained 10 900 SNA soldiers to date. However, they still lack basic equipment, such as guns, camouflage gear and operational vehicles.

“We are training the Somali (National Army), but a soldier only becomes a soldier when he is equipped with a gun to fight. There is fear in the international community that Somalia is full of guns, hence the hesitation.
“But we need to have at least 20 000 SNA soldiers to ensure the country’s security equipped ahead of the AMISOM exit. That is exactly where the problem is,” Madeira said.

Further, Madeira accused some troop contributing member states to the AMISOM force of using their security contribution in Somalia as a bargaining chip for making unreasonable demands from the mission’s partner and funding nations.

He cited the Kenyan withdrawal of 1 000 troops from South Sudan after a fall-out with the United Nations which accused Lieutenant General Johnson Ondieki, the peacekeeping army commander from the Kenyan Defence Force (KDF), of failing to protect civilians among other criticisms of his leadership.

In June last year, the precarious financial state of the AMISOM force was worsened by a 20 per cent cut in critical European Union (EU) funding which pays troop salaries. The cut came at a time when member states such as Kenya, Uganda and Burundi were complaining of long delays in the disbursement of salaries for AMISOM soldiers.

Early this month, Burundi warned it would soon take legal action to recover the out-standing salaries of its troops in Somalia.

Since October last year, Ethiopia has withdrawn 4 000 non-AMISOM troops who provided critical operational support to the mission, where it has another 4 000 troops. The defence ministry cited the high cost of maintaining the troops in Somalia against the background of a worsening economic crisis at home.

Recent media reports from Mogadishu claimed Al Shabaab had regained control of most towns abandoned by the ENDF since October last year in southern and central Somalia.

The Ugandan People’s Defence Force (UPDF), which has a partial salary backlog of eight months, has also complained repeatedly about the high cost of sustaining the soldiers on behalf of the AU. Uganda has also announced plans to withdraw 6 000 troops from the AMISOM mission by the end of 2017.

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Detained murder suspect Mathew Kanyamunyu, his co-accused Joseph Kanyamunyu and lady friend Cynthia Munangwari, are expected to be committed to the High Court today by the Nakawa Chief Magistrate.

The three were last week denied bail by High Court judge Lady Justice Elizabeth Kabanda and sent back to Luzira Prisons, where they have been on remand for about three months.

Prosecution avers that last year Mathew Kanyamunyu and his co-accused killed social worker Kenneth Akena, after the latter allegedly scratched a car in which Mathew was together with Ms Munangwari. This, Prosecution says, prompted Mathew to draw a gun and shoot Akena, a development that has since caused bad blood with tribal intonations flying between relatives and friends on the two sides, and subsequently drawing in politicians.

Last week when the matter came up before the High Court, with the three accused seeking bail, five MPs from northern Uganda led by Aruu County MP Odonga Otto and Beatrice Anywar appended their signatures on a document, indicating they would quit the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) party if Dr Kizza Besigye (a former FDC presidential candidate) did not prevail over his wife Winnie Byanyima to withdraw from the case. Ms Byanyima, who is an aunt of the Kanyamunyus, was in court to stand surety for Mathew, the alleged killer, something that did not go down well with the deceased’s relatives, who argued that given Winnie’s national and international stature, she was likely to influence the decision of the presiding judge.

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The new seven-member Independent Electoral Commission committee has been sworn-in today at the High Court by the Chief Justice Bart Katureebe.

The committee members named late last year include Justice Simon Byabakama Mugenyi, the IEC Chairman, deputized by Hajjati Aisha Lubega. Byabakama Mugyenyi was an Appeal/Constitutional Court Judge, while Hajjati Lubega is a former long-serving headteacher at Nabisunsa Girls School. Other members include Stephen Tashobya, the former Kajara county MP and chairman of the parliamentary committee on legal affairs in the 8^th and 9^th Parliament; Prof George Piwang, Peter Emorut and little-known Mustapha Ssebagala Kigozi.

The new team will replace that led by Eng Badru Kiggundu, whose mandate ended November 17 last year.

Kiggundu, who supervised three presidential elections, served at the IEC for 14 years since 2002 when he replaced Hajji Aziz Kasujja, who passed on in April last year.

Other members of Kiggundu’s team included Joseph Biribonwa (Vice Chairman); Tom Buruku; Jenny Okello; Stephen Ongaria and Justine Mugabi Ahabwe.

IEC members can only serve a maximum of two-seven year terms.

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All the senior officers who were promoted in the recent Uganda Peoples Defence Forces (UPDF) reshuffle are being decorated today at a function at the Ministry of Defence headquarters in Mbuya.

Early last week President Yoweri Museveni who is also the Commander-in-Chief made a number of changes in the army leadership, dropping the Chief of Defence Forces General Edward Katumba Wamala and replacing him with General David Muhoozi, the former Commander of Land Forces (CLF), who was also promoted from the rank of Major General.

In the same reshuffle Gen.Museveni also appointed the former Joint Chief of Staff (JCOS) Major General Wilson Mbadi Mbasu the Deputy Chief of Defence Forces (D/CDF) and also promoted him to the rank of Lieutenant General. Gen. Mbadi replaced Lt.Gen. Charles Angina, who was moved to Operation Wealth Creation (OWC), as Deputy Commander.

In the same reshuffle Gen. Museveni also named his son Major General Muhoozi Kainerugaba, the Special Presidential Advisor for Special Operations, effectively removing him from the leadership of the elite Special Forces Command (SFC), and replacing him with Colonel Don Nabaasa. Other officers promoted in the first batch included among others Brig. Peter Elwelu, who was named CLF and promoted to Major General.

Then mid-week the C-I-C made other appointments and promotions among them that of Brig. Proscovia Nalweyiso, the highest-ranking UPDF female officer, who was promoted to Major General and retained her job as Gen. Museveni’s advisor attached to State House; Brig. George Igumba was named the new Chief of Administration and Finance (CAF), while Brig. Sam Kavuma was named Deputy Commander Airforce. Others are Col. Henry Matsiko, who was promoted to Brigadier and appointed the UPDF Chief Political Commissar (CPC), replacing Col. Felix Kulaigye; Brig Chris Bbosa, who became deputy Commandant of the Senior Staff College at Kimaka, Jinja, and Col. Michael Kabango, who was promoted to Brigadier and transferred to Div 5.

Brigadiers Kavuma and Kabango previously served as contingent Commanders in the Central African Republic, where they were engaged in pursuing the Lords Resistance Army rebels led by Joseph Kony.

Major General Nakibus Lakara was deployed as the Commandant of Uganda Rapid Deployment Centre (URDC) in Jinja.

Long-serving Defence and Army spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Paddy Ankunda was also replaced by Brigadier Richard Karemire, the former Deputy Chief of Military Intelligence.

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