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At 6:36pm yesterday, the FDC Electoral Commission chairperson, Mr Dan Mugarura, announced that Maj. Gen. Muntu had returned 393 votes (50.64 per cent), defeating Leader of the Opposition in Parliament, Mr Nathan Nandala Mafabi, who got 361 votes (46.392 per cent).
Tororo County MP Geoffrey Ekanya came third with 17 votes (2.91 per cent) in the three-horse race to lead the biggest opposition party in the country.
Gen Muntu’s win marked the end of a tense 90 days that saw the three candidates traverse the country to canvass for votes in a campaign which has tested the FDC’s ability to stay united.
The party rules provide that a winner would be decided if one candidate gathered 50 per cent plus one vote.
A total of 776 votes were cast as the party marked a transition from founding president, Dr Kizza Besigye, who has thrice run against President Museveni in bitterly fought national polls. Dr Besigye has consistently rejected the outcome of his contests with Mr Museveni in 2001, 2006 and 2011 as having been rigged in favour of the incumbent.
Jubilation
Delegates, who had convened at Namboole stadium erupted in jubilation as Gen. Muntu was lifted shoulder high by supporters.
The Mafabi camp was clearly devastated, with some of his supporters collapsing.
Mr Mafabi, however, promised to work with the winner and asked members to be accountable to the party. Proceedings at Namboole were not without some drama. At polling station number 7, controversy brewed, forcing a recount of votes.
Mr Toterebuka Bamwenda, the FDC deputy spokesperson, and a member of the Elect-Nandala task force, said his team would petition the FDC National Election Tribunal over “multiple voting”.
“Alice Alaso voted seven times and Francis Epetait voted three times,” Mr Bamwenda said. Ms Alaso, who is the party secretary general, however, said she would reply after reading the promised petition.
Tension, excitement and intrigue characterised yesterday’s election as delegates drawn from Uganda’s 80 districts as at 2010 struggled to marshal last minute support for their candidates.
Police was heavily deployed in and around the stadium complex as voting commenced at 2pm. Earlier, at 11am, rumours of voter bribery rippled through the conference. A lady identified as Ms Anita Among was reportedly caught distributing money. No action was taken by party security though. Other unknown persons were seen holding tags written on “Namboole staff” although the stadium management could not positively identify them as part of their staff.
At the main gates, there were skirmishes as police fought off people without accreditation. Most claimed to be delegates who had been disenfranchised. Several people were arrested on suspicion that they wanted to take advantage of the commotion to commit crimes.
Dr Besigye had stayed in the shadows throughout the campaign, refusing to take sides in a process which sometimes threatened to come undone by mudslinging, sectarian tendencies and accusations of voter manipulations.
Yesterday, he told delegates he was leaving the party leadership “to concentrate on the struggle to liberate Uganda.”
Dr Besigye leaves the party leadership just two years shy of the end of his presidency, which would have ended in 2014.
“Once I have handed over the party leadership today, I will concentrate on the struggle to liberate Uganda,” he said.
This was yet the first hint Dr Besigye was giving that he will again offer himself for election when the country goes to the polls in 2016. The FDC constitution allows any party member, popularly elected, to stand as party flag bearer in national elections.
“I will be available to the new party leadership and to the party if called upon to do so. I am not going to the tall grasses,” Dr Besigye added.
“Last month I completed seven years as leader of the FDC. I felt going beyond seven years would be disgraceful,” he said. Dr Besigye also outlined five principles which he said the new party president should adopt.
\“The new leader must devise new methods of raising money for the party, promoting the party’s ideology, building the party’s grass-root support and leadership,” Dr Besigye said.
Tensions reached fever-pitch when the candidates took to the podium to make a final case for support.
There had also been debate on whether party Ms Alaso should be allowed to deliver a status report on the party’s affairs.
Ms Alaso was later granted seven minutes to deliver the party’s status report.
Candidates resorted to catchy names. Gen. Muntu described himself as a “fearless patriot” while Mr Mafabi called himself a “villager”. Mr Ekanya chose to describe himself as a “musician and a dancer.”
Taking to the podium first, the “patriot” lashed at critics who suggest that he is “an NRM mole and a coward”. “Those who say I am an NRM mole, you hurt me deeply. Everything I have done has been to promote FDC,” he moved.
“You call me a coward, a man who led an army of 100,000 men and seven factions and left it intact with no factions?” he added.
He asked delegates not to vote for him if they sympathise with him.
“I don’t need your sympathies. Twice, I have handled defeat and you have seen how I have behaved. Now, trust me with victory and I will not disappoint you,” he said.
“I have been specifically designed to fit in the strategy of FDC, to liberate this country by hastening the exit of this regime,” the former army boss, added.
“The villager” was next, describing himself as a “general” in mobilisation. “FDC needs hands-on leaders. If I managed the Bugisu Corporative Union to its present success, what more can I do for this party and country,” Mr Mafabi said.
“Good party structures in the grassroots will automatically campaign for the party. I have the capacity as a villager to reach the grassroots. I have done it time and again,” he added.
Mr Ekanya, the “dancer”, told the gathered faithful that time had come to change the manner in which FDC affairs are run.
He castigated the trend where the party president has automatically gone on to be the party’s flag bearer. “A party in the opposition cannot behave like a party in power. We must change internally before we can change this country otherwise we are doomed,” he said.
“When the time came to create the necessary music to kick President Museveni out of power, few showed up. It is time for the men and women of FDC to stand up and be counted,” Mr Ekanya added
REACTIONS TO VOTE
Mr Joachim Buwembo, Journalist. Congratulations to Gen. Mugisha Muntu, a man of privileged background who could have had it easy and comfortable all the way from his campus days ... through the current administration, but chose to always be on the side of the people...
Ms Betty Akello [Farmer]
The election was good and well oraganised and I did not find anything wrong with it that might affect the credibility of the winner.
Sheik Sinan Kagwa [Businessman]
On the Ugandan level, it was a fairly managed event. What the delegates had not understood was the provision of MPs voting for others [by proxy] which was explained to us by the electoral commission later.
Mr Habib Kasolo [Businessman]. I came to vote but when it came to elections time, MPs like Alaso, Nabilah and Epetait were voting more than once which made me very disturbed.
Ms Naiga Yudaya [Salon attendant].
The process was not going on badly until we learnt that the secretary general had voted more than once which might spoil our party as we have been trying to set an example.
Ms Nassuna Nulu [Farmer]
I didn’t find any major problems with the process that would affect the results.
By Solomon Arinaitwe
The making of the new FDC party president
Maj. Gen. Mugisha Muntu was born on January 1, 1958.
He studied Political Science at Makerere University. He served as the Army Commander from 1989 until 1998.
Muntu served served in the army at a time when, according to him, many “excited army officers” would keep sacks full of money in their offices.
There was “no” accounting system. He is credited for putting a stop to this and for not having abused his office to amass wealth.
A commendation would have been forthcoming, but for the 1995 Atiak massacre of 200 Ugandans allegedly by the Lord’s Resistance Army and for the 1998 killing of 80 students of Kichwamba Technical Institute by the Allied Democratic Force(s).
So President Museveni allegedly sacked him in 1998 when he (Muntu) was on leave.
Muntu later joined the opposition after falling out with the NRM over corruption and other forms of misrule. He also saw that Ugandans were now more divided by tribe and region than they have ever been – a consequence of President Museveni’s politics of cronyism.
