In the 2021 presidential elections, Bugweri District was won by the Opposition’s Robert Kyagulanyi, alias Bobi Wine. For the 2026 elections, former Opposition stalwart Abdu Katuntu, who has been in Parliament since 2001, has assigned himself the role of ensuring President Museveni, who once labelled him a poisonous mushroom, wins back the district.
To trace when Katuntu’s standing at the Opposition side of the political aisle started to be questioned, you have to go back to 2017.
The Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) party was in the process of electing its president in a clash that pitted Patrick Oboi Amuriat, the eventual winner, against Mugisha Muntu.
When Muntu was beaten, his supporters, led by Kassiano Wadri and Yokasi Bihande, told anyone who cared to listen at the Mandela National Stadium (Namboole) that this was the end of FDC as it was known. A new political party, they added, would soon announce its arrival.
That party is what we now know as the Alliance for National Transformation (ANT). What stood out during ANT’s formation, sources disclose, was Katuntu’s no-show, despite being the brainchild of this splinter group. Muntu’s calls to Katuntu were allegedly neither picked up nor returned.
‘This left him [Muntu] angry because he had counted on him, yet Katuntu was never straightforward with him that he was never going to join his political party,’ a source said.
Unlike Kira MP Ibrahim Ssemujju Nganda, who was part of the Muntu campaign team but returned to the FDC, and later moved on to be a mastermind of the People’s Front for Freedom (PFF), Katuntu didn’t go back to the FDC. He instead claimed to be an Independent.
Seven years later, Katuntu told voters in Bugweri, Busoga Sub-region, who had attended a rally Parliament Speaker Annet Anita Among had organised a couple of weekends ago, that they should rally behind President Museveni.
‘I’m an Independent, and I repeat I’m an Independent, but I will vote for a President because being an Independent isn’t a political party. Whoever believes in me as his or her captain: We should sit down and strategise on how to look for votes for the Speaker’s candidate [Museveni],’ Katuntu said.
Shifting allegiances
Katuntu’s appearance at a rally organised by Among has plunged him at the heart of NRM Busoga politics. Two camps have emerged in the sub-region, that of Among and her sworn enemy, former Speaker Rebecca Kadaga. Among has been combing Busoga to shore up support for candidate Museveni, saying since she married Moses Magogo, a Musoga, she is now also their ‘daughter.’
Before Among and her team campaigned in Bugweri, Kadaga had also barnstormed there with NRM’s flag-bearer Sadala Wandera, a former Resident District Commissioner (RDC) of Bugweri.
Yet when Among combed for votes in this area, Wandera, who is in the Kadaga camp, didn’t show up since, to the Among camp, Katuntu is their preferred candidate.
‘We think Katuntu deserves to be the Attorney General. We should stick with Katuntu. Katuntu deserves another term,’ Kasambya MP David Kabanda, a top lieutenant of Among’s, said during the rally in Bugweri. The Attorney General hunt talk is not new.
In 2020, once it became clear that Bart Katureebe was about to hang up his wig as Chief Justice, Katuntu was among those who put his hand up; never mind that he didn’t have an interface with the Judicial Service Commission (JSC).
Three judges, Justice Richard Buteera, Justice Esther Kisaakye and Justice Alfonse Owiny-Dollo, interfaced with the JSC.
Mr Owiny-Dollo would come out on top. Having not got his wish of being the head of one of Uganda’s arms of government, Katuntu walked back on his public declaration that he was going to retire from elective politics. He stood for the fifth time in Bugweri.
During his first three terms as the lawmaker of Bugweri, Katuntu, who was one of the founder members of the FDC, supported the party’s presidential candidate, Dr Kizza Besigye.
The 2006 elections stood out in the sense that Katuntu had controversially lost his Bugweri County seat to NRM’s Ali Kirunda Kivejinja. The Electoral Commission (EC) had declared that Kivejinja, who has since died, had polled 17,554 votes against Katuntu’s 16,496 votes.
Court battle
After procuring the services of Erias Lukwago, Katuntu filed a petition alleging that Kivejinja’s victory wasn’t only a work of fraud but also State-inspired violence. Lukwago, on Katuntu’s behalf, said contrary to Section 19(3) of the Electoral Commission Act, the EC had disenfranchised voters by deleting their names from the voters’ roll and also denying Katuntu’s registered supporters the right to vote.