Besigye to Kamya: Joining Museveni okay for you, betraying the party isn't

Dr Besigye and Ms Kamya have traded barbs over the impending dissolution of the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), an Opposition organisation founded on December 16, 2004.

POLITICS | Opposition stalwart Kizza Besigye has launched right back into his erstwhile comrade in the struggle, Beti Kamya, suggesting she needed self-introspection on her political life.

Dr Besigye and Ms Kamya have traded barbs over the impending dissolution of the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), an Opposition organisation founded on December 16, 2004.

But years of schism within has caused irreparable cracks into the walls of the Najjankumbi-based party, which for 16 years gave the government of Yoweri Museveni a blood nose.

Dr Besigye, a founding president of the party, has challenged Mr Museveni's stronghold on the top Executive seat in the country four times, with Ms Kamya backing him at least three times - including in 2001 under the Reform Agenda banner.

After stepping down from FDC leadership in December 2012, Dr Besigye retreated to his private office on Katonga Road in Nakasero, where a band of loyalists followed him - and with it, their allegiance.

And, with deepening intrigue leading to a fallout, the Katonga Road became a faction of FDC, eventually giving way to Monday's decision by the party delegates to announce the dissolution of the party.

Ms Kamya, a founder member of FDC, was not amused by the decision even as she has for nearly a decade served under the man she once swore to oppose to her grave.

"It's a pity that FDC Katonga has decided to destroy FDC in the spirit of 'if I can't have it, you won't have it either,'" Ms Kamya posted on X on Wednesday.

"It's such a mean, destructive spirit! If people who really started FDC while Besigye was in exile like James Musinguzi, Augustine Ruzindana, Mugisha Muntu, Winnie Byanyima, Yours Truly and others just walked away when things were not going according to our expectations, how can Besigye allow the Johnnie-come-latelies like [Erias] Lukwago and [Wasswa] Biriggwa to destroy a 20-year investment?"

Ms Kamya was positing legimate questions in the wake of the controversial FDC decision that sees a new party, the People’s Front for Freedom (PFF), being fronted by the same group.

However, for a woman who is incomplete without makeup, one would be forgiven for suggesting that Ms Kamya carries a dressing mirror to bed. She probably would have made use of one, or so Dr Besigye feels.

Ms Kamya, after leaving FDC in installments, made a feeble attempt at the presidency in 2016 under her party, the Uganda Federal Alliance.

But shortly afterwards, she dramatically came out of the closet the political alleys had kept whispering she was in, by accepting a salacious post as the Minister for Kampala Capital City Authority in Mr Museveni's government.

She had during her tenacious years of strong opposition to Mr Museveni bragged that she would never go for anything lower than Vice-President if she was to accept a job in the NRM government.

But the current Ombudsman had taken much less and went on to swear allegiance to Museveni in the runup to the 2021 general elections, campaigning for him and against the same ideals she had stood towering against years past.

It is this changling that Dr Besigye decided to tackle on the social media streets, addressing it as double standards and the case of having your cake and eating it too.

"It would be wrong to allow the 20-ear investment for causing “Democratic Change” to be taken over by NRM/Museveni Junta and turned against its original mission," he said.

"It was okay for you, as an individual, to defect and join the Museveni you castigated for 20 years. It’s different when the party is betrayed by its leaders to go against its mission!"

Dr Besigye and his allies have always argued that Mr Museveni had bought into FDC so much that he claimed a few party leaders in Najjankumbi had dangled cash offers in millions of shillings from NRM government.

He claimed the financial inducement brought in by FDC president Patrick Amuriat and Secretary General Nandala Mafabi, was such that he steps on the brakes in his political activism and take the money into armchair rhetorics.

Amuriat and Mafabi have consistently denied the accusations.