A day after Nyendo-Mukungwe MP Mathias Mpuuga held his thanksgiving mass at Kitovu Sports Arena in Masaka City, a councilor who attended the event has been attacked by supporters of main opposition National Unity Platform (NUP) who accused him of betrayal.
NUP, whose leader is musician and politician Robert Kyagulanyi aka Bobi Wine, has been at loggerheads with Mpuuga, a former leader of opposition in Parliament (LoP) fired and replaced with first time MP Joel Ssenyonyi.
The disagreements between Bobi Wine and Mpuuga have threatened to tear the NUP apart. Weeks ago, Bobi Wine held a mega rally in Masaka which Mpuuga and a few MPs who back him skipped. After the well attended rally, police suspended Bobi Wine’s countrywide consultative rallies.
A few weeks later, Mpuuga held his thanksgiving mass. Happening on June 21, the mass was attended by at least 12 MPs and a minister. A little known NUP councilor named Fred Kiyimba from Mukono District attended at the Mpuuga event and some want him to pay for it.
Kiyimba’s fellow NUP supporters were watching and ready to teach him a lesson for what they called betrayal. To these NUP councilors in Mukono, Kiyimba (who represents Ggulu Ward, Kitete in Mukono Central Division) was a traitor who betrayed the NUP party, its leader Bobi Wine and the struggle to remove the Museveni regime that has ruled Uganda for close to four decades.
And these youths who claim to belong to NUP are not alone but rather share a feeling of hostility that a good number at the Makerere Kavule-based NUP have against Mpuuga for an alleged rift between him and NUP principal Bobi Wine as well as for the allegations of corruption against him.
Mpuuga and three commissioners of parliament – Esther Afoyochan, Prossy Akampurira Mbabazi and Solomon Silwany – continue to face public criticism over a controversial Shs1.7bn cash award they reportedly shared.
After firing Mpuuga as LoP, Bobi Wine appointed the Nyendo-Mukungwe MP as commissioner of parliament, then fired him from the same role as well as from his position as deputy party president in charge of Buganda. But Mpuuga has refused to leave his commissioner job and vowed not to leave the party. (Read Stories Here and There).
The NUP youths such as Sheilah Amanio who not long ago crossed from Museveni’s ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) and Rogers Tefiro Bazanya labelled Kiyimba an enemy of the NUP party simply because he supports Mpuuga, a man accused of pocketing Shs500m taxpayers’ money as a service award. They say the money should have been put to better youth instead of it being given to one man who already has some wealth.
But Kiyimba instead accused Amanio, Tefiro and other youths who threw him out of his office of being moles planted by the NRM to destabilize the NUP in Mukono and make it lose ground in Mukono and Buganda.
It should be remembered that during his thanksgiving, Mathias Mpuuga spoke about his potential to become NUP president and Uganda’s president. (Read Story Here).
