Former presidential candidate Dr Kizza Besigye says Ugandans are not doing themselves justice to put their heads in the sand and not assign responsibility to the assassinations they have witnessed.
“You cannot be the person being accused of an offense and then you are the investigator at the same time. That is what the government is doing with the various cases of insecurity,” Besigye said while appearing on NTV “On The Spot” programme.
Patrick Kamara: Has there been an attempt on your life?
Besigye: Yes, of course. Many times. I have said this many times.
Besigye explained that there is a lot of deliberate and choreographed incidents that are happening and will happen that are dangerous to the people.
“We saw what happened in Arua. Someone was killed in a place where Bobi Wine was supposed to be seated. Political contestation in political organisations is a constant. You cannot avoid it. That does not mean that it goes into situations where guns get into the picture.”
Besigye said the fact that Ugandans have a regime of 3 decades that has lost its popularity and legitimacy shows there is a very serious political legitimacy problem.
“You cannot contest in an election is a situation like ours here in Uganda and expect to win. I was surprised to see a leader in Security in Uganda stand in front of the parliament and claim that pictures of journalists being beaten were actually from Nigeria. These are journalists we know.”
He said the UPDF unit that brutalised colleagues in Arua is under Special Forces Command. It’s called the Commando Unit. It was trained by North Korea.
In Arua, someone (Yassin Kawuma) was killed. But there is no who was arrested. There is no inquiry to establish the circumstances leading to the murder of a citizen, Besigye noted.
“There was an intended scheme that did not succeed. The plan was for me to have a rivalry with Bobi Wine. There was a lot of attempts to create such non-existent confrontation and if it was successful, the idea was to kill him and accuse me of it.”
The fact of the matter is how to shift power from a few who are using guns to the majority of Ugandans. Do not linger on who is involved, he said.
“This is not a generational struggle. It is a liberation struggle. The individuals do not matter. They can be young or old.”
Besigye said in a military dictatorship, it is not easy to influence the political will of the people. “We need a process to heal the country. this country has a lot of trauma.”
“When you talk about people power, it’s not about choosing a leader, because people without power cannot choose leaders. When you see people chanting Our Power, it’s been done over a period of over 20 years.”
He added: “Even Bobi Wine has been supported and motivated by people whom you now think are irrelevant. The People Power Campaign is about people reclaiming their country first.”
He said many Ugandans have been born after independence and they have never seen a peaceful transfer of power from one person to another.
Any dialogue that seeks to address the fundamental issues of this country should work and talk about the transition, Besigye observed, adding that whoever holds a country captive should know that it is no longer acceptable.
“For anyone pursuing national dialogue, they must not think power will change through persuasion. They must pursue transition. But that only happens once those holding state captive come to realisation that it’s no longer tenable to hold onto power.”
The messages show that indeed Ugandans are fade up with Museveni and it’s time for a leader to rise and salvage this country before it sinks even further.