BY DERRICK WANDERA
The explosion in the opposition Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) party on Monday last week was long expected. Endless internal bickering had brewed over the past years.
So, when a group convened a national consultative meeting at Nsambya Sharing Hall in Kampala without the FDC top leadership, it was clear the party was split right in the middle.
Both the party President, Patrick Oboi Amuriat, and Secretary General Nathan Nandala Mafabi were a no-show at the event where a rival camp spewed accusations.
The outbursts by Kira Municipality MP Ibrahim Ssemujju Nganda had been bottled up for the past many years.
It first bubbled over one September afternoon when a group of FDC top leaders showed up at a publication house in town, asking to share the story of their pains at the hands of top party officials at their Najjanankumbi headquarters.
They confessed the party was struggling financially and needed to access donors to sustain the biggest opposition political powerhouse that until the 2021 General Election had the most MPs in Parliament and also provided the Leader of the Opposition.
The officials, who asked that their identity be concealed for them to freely share their inside information, tore into FDC party leader, Dr Kizza Besigye, for strangling the party he had helped to grow.
They also accused Dr Besigye of fanning tribal politics, blackmail, and betrayal within the party.
“Dr Besigye has been a pillar for FDC for many years but he never left the party in good faith. He went with all contacts and bank details of the finances, which left the party crippled. Some of these donors funded the party directly through him,” the official lamented.
Col Besigye versus Gen Muntu
In 2011, Dr Besigye announced his exit as FDC party President to create room for other leaders to take charge of the party that he said at the time was divided on the best options to pursue in wresting power from President Museveni who has clung to power for nearly 40 years.
Upon Dr Besigye’s exit, Maj Gen Mugusha Muntu took over the party leadership.
Dr Besigye would then set up his command post at Katonga Road in Nakasero, indicating he wanted to give space to another leader to steer the party. But the officials say the main reason for Dr Besigye’s desertion of the party was the unending rivalry between the two former bush-war veterans. Many analysts also saw the move as a trick to create two powerhouses.
“I faced opposition from the first day I entered office because party members were taking orders from two different directions,” Gen Muntu stated in one of his interviews.
This rivalry dates back in the years. For instance, in the run-up to the 2006 presidential elections when a delegation led by former FDC leader Amanya Mushega, had gone to South Africa ask Dr Besigye who had fled due to hostility to come back and stand as a candidate in an impending election.
After the meeting where there had been a unanimous vote to have Dr Besigye stand in 2006, Muntu moved to him and bent and told him, “I know you have been named to stand but I am also interested.”
“Some of these fights are as ethic as you can get to know. Given the fact that Besigye is from tribal sentiments to personal issues. The squabbles have always been likened to that,” a source analyzed.
After Gen Muntu lost to be re-elected as party president in 2018, he moved to launch a pressure group, ‘The New Formation’, which would later morph into the Alliance for National Transformation (ANT) party.
“The reason we left FDC is because we have continuously fought internally because of having divergent approaches to the struggle. They want to run the party based on radicalism, but we want to run it with a grassroots approach,” Muntu said during the launch of the party with some leaders he had quit with from FDC party.
Besigye versus Mafabi, Amuriat
So, when two factions of FDC party held two parallel media briefings at Katonga and Najjanankumbi on Wednesday last week, it was a replay of the old fights for supremacy.
But what has suddenly frozen the once warm bond between the soul brothers of defiance – Dr Besigye, Amuriat, and Mafabi?
Interestingly, after the 2018 FDC presidential elections at Namboole, the following morning, many dailies ran cartoons of a split face; with Dr Besigye on the one side and Amuriat on the other.
This was a telling paradox that Dr Besigye and Amuriat were two faces of the same coin and would run the FDC party in the shadows of each other.
Multiple sources told this publication that many of the decisions then made at Najjanankumbi were first sanctioned at the senior command post at Katonga Road.
But insiders now say Dr Besigye’s move to support Amuriat against Gen Muntu was his masterstroke to keep a grip on the party, which he helped found after the 2001 presidential election, which he lost to President Museveni.
The sources say Dr Besigye’s scheming was for Amuriat to lead the party for two years, following his surprise resignation, with two years left to serve out his term.
“But this calculation of a strategic comeback was disrupted because FDC was not able to organise its party polls due to Covid-19 pandemic that forced the country into a lockdown for the better part of 2020,” the official said.
But FDC party chairman, Mr Wasswa Biriggwa, dismissed these claims in an interview and asserts that the current quarrels are to make sure that the FDC party is not hijacked by hostile forces.
“No, Dr Besigye will not run in 2026 and he is not interested. What I know is that some stubborn fellows like Nandala are trying to make it hard for the party to exist. But we shall play our roles to make sure we remain in charge,” he said.
“Two days ago, I stopped the ongoing grassroots elections process because we have so many problems at the moment with some leaders whom we don’t know where they got the money they are using. But I know that they have insisted on carrying out the elections but if they do, we shall sort them out,” Mr Biriggwa warned.
During the Wednesday press briefing, Dr Besigye acknowledged sentiments of tribalism in FDC but blamed President Museveni for engineering divisions within the opposition party.
“I have seen accusations flying around and suddenly they now are labeling this as a Besigye-Nandala fight, which is not true. Gen Museveni has been very smart in selling the tribal card from the North, South West, and East. This is not a new thing but I also know that party members are saying that I’m trying to stifle people from the East, that is expected,” Dr Besigye said.
The controversial Monday National Consultative meeting was a manifestation of these fights that have been simmering in FDC, which many fear is on the verge of splintering again. They claim that Mr Mafabi and Amuriat are on a mission to deliver the party to President Museveni.
Fights over dirty money
These grave accusations stem from rumors that started flying around a few months ago, that Mr Mafabi had picked some cash from President Museveni and it was never accounted for, and part of this money is what was used to fund the 2021 Presidential election campaigns of Amuriat.
This money, according to sources, could be the reason Dr Besigye, Mafabi, and Amuriat are not seeing eye-to-eye.
Some FDC leaders at Najjanankumbi now claim that a portion of this money is what is financing the ongoing FDC grassroots elections and nationwide tours, which Mr Biriggwa said he has ordered to be stopped.
There is also an ongoing investigation to establish whether this cash was obtained illegally and this will inform their next course of action.
This publication understands that about Shs160b was promised by an undisclosed source to be released to support FDC party but would be given in a phased manner, starting with Shs27b.
Shs300m of the Shs27b, was reportedly taken to Dr Besigye which was subjected to scrutiny, including tracing the serial numbers. When the party asked that the cash be taken back to the party headquarters, it never arrived as the full sum.
This forced an intense discussion, which sources say, nearly boiled over and ended unceremoniously as the leaders failed to agree.
Mr Mafabi, sources said, openly accused Dr Besigye of taking money from the party coffers which he never accounted for and should not be the person asking for accountability for what is being referred to as bad money.
Officials at FDC say at one of the meetings, Mr Mafabi went bare knuckles with Dr Besigye and accused him of abandoning Mr Amuriat during the presidential elections in 2021 yet party leaders had always stood with Dr Besigye when he ran for president in 2001, 2006, 2011 and 2016.
This bad blood, officials at FDC say, started in the run-up to the 2021 general election after efforts to sway Dr Besigye to the ballot hit a dead end. The leaders reportedly pleaded with Dr Besigye to at least support the party mobilise finances from donors, which they say he refused.
But in his defence on Wednesday, Dr Besigye said that the rush through the process to get a presidential candidate made it hard for him to convince donors to support him.
“I had to get to tell them who the candidate was but that was a difficult choice so I had to be quiet. That was when I saw this money coming and when I went to ask about it, they told me to back off. At some point, they even asked me, who are you in the party,” Dr Besigye said during the press briefing.
Mr Ssemujju, the spokesperson of the party said, “We shall not allow this [hijack of FDC] to happen, we shall sink with them. Mr Nandala wants to run this party like a petrol station, and yet some of us have given it our lives, and time, we shall not allow it,” he said.
For now, FDC stands on the brink of splintering as was in 2018 and risks being weakened more.
