Anita Among’s reelection to Parliament has opened a Pandora’s box, with Opposition leader Robert Kyagulanyi, alias Bobi Wine, saying the Speaker of the 11th Parliament is the beneficiary of exhibition of dark arts. Among was on Thursday elected unopposed as the Bukedea District Woman Representative (DWR) in the 12th Parliament.
Bobi Wine stopped short of saying there was foul play after two aspirants his party intended to have on the ballot were mysteriously unavailable on the final day of nomination of candidates in parliamentary races. The developments mean, just as was the case during the immediate past electoral cycle, Among heads to the House unopposed.
People installed within Among’s sanctum have told Saturday Monitor that Among intends to ramp up her mobilisation of votes for candidate Yoweri Museveni as he looks to extend his presidency. The Opposition say this is only half of the story.
Dark arts?
In every general election cycle, a National Resistance Movement (NRM) party cadre, who isn’t bogged down in their constituency, assigns himself or herself the role of undoing the work that the Opposition has done. This assignment includes organising rallies where the Opposition’s leading presidential candidate has just held their campaigns and parading Opposition supporters alleged to have decamped to the NRM.
During the 2021 election campaigns, it was Mike Mukula, unburdened by choosing not to vie for a parliamentary seat, who assigned himself the role of rocking the boat of Bobi Wine, the National Unity Platform (NUP) presidential flag-bearer. Mukula used a helicopter to crisscross eastern and northern Uganda, making what he christened as ‘clandestine’ manoeuvres. Then the NRM’s Vice Chairman for eastern Uganda, Mukula declared his intention to dismantle any semblance of structure that Bobi Wine had put in place.
Mukula’s tactic was to go wherever the NUP presidential candidate had completed campaigning and talk to his agents to decamp to the NRM side. The NRM stalwart was confident that following his manoeuvres, NUP wasn’t going to win any parliamentary seats from West Nile, Acholi, Lango, Sebei, Busoga and Bugisu. The former Soroti Municipality MP’s methods basked in the glory of limiting NUP to only two successful parliamentary victories in eastern Uganda-John Baptist Nambeshe, who won Manjiya County in Bugisu Sub-region and Manjeri Kyebakutika, who won the Jinja City Woman Representative slot.
For the 2026 elections, Among has assigned herself the role of trying to undo the inroads made by the Opposition. After soundly defeating Rebecca Kadaga for the coveted position of the NRM’s Second Female National Vice Chairperson, sources say Among has been ‘under pressure’ to prove that she is a performer. To get the better of Kadaga, whose strength was her seniority, Among styled herself as the great mobiliser. ‘Yes, I’m new, but I come with new ideas and new vibrancy. The mobilisation that I’m doing for this party… I have over 10 Members of Parliament here that I have brought from the Opposition to the NRM, and here they are,’ Among said during the NRM delegates conference held in August.
With Museveni slowing down as any octogenarian would, Among has taken the role of being his chief campaigner. Observers say she has been eager to reach all precincts of the country where her boss can’t reach. Yet to effectively reach every part of this country, sources that preferred anonymity told Saturday Monitor that the outgoing House Speaker doesn’t want to be bothered with any notion of the Opposition in her Bukedea backyard where she has been the DWR for two terms.
It’s in this context that, sources say, all possible challengers to her seat in Bukedea, including Marion Mercy Alupo (NUP), Hellen Odeke Akol (Independent), and Susan Norma Otai (Forum for Democratic Change), found themselves off the voters’ register. NUP described the circumstances as dubious.
Barred
It all started when Zipporah Akol, who works at Parliament, where Among is the Speaker, dragged Alupo, Odeke and Otai to court. She said the three hopefuls should be barred from being nominated as candidates for the Bukedea DWR slot. It was further alleged that none of the three originate from Bukedea. The Electoral Commission (EC) would later file an affidavit in the High Court in support of Akol’s case, confirming that indeed the names of Among’s rivals had been deleted from the register following a recommendation from a tribunal.
‘The Commission, upon review of the tribunal’s decisions, established that no evidence was lodged with the tribunals to challenge its decisions recommending deletion of the first [Alupo], second [Odeke], and third [Otai] respondents during the 10 days of natural justice,’ said Richard Kamugisha Baabo, the EC’s acting secretary.
The three women who were removed denied ever appearing before the said tribunal. ‘To fool or expose themselves, they deleted the names, they called us at the EC office in Kampala, then constituted the committee whose mandate had expired, to probe us,’ Otai explained. While Among’s opponents were chained, she was combing Busoga, which had been covered by Bobi Wine. Once Bobi Wine exited Buyende District, where the Speaker’s husband, Moses Magogo, is a native, Among dashed there telling NRM supporters to start a door-to-door campaign in which they would ask people to vote for Museveni on the grounds that ‘he believes in God.’
‘Ask each person to please support the man who believes in God, President Museveni. I say he believes in God because he assented to the Anti-Homosexuality Bill,’ Among said. Among also went to Bugiri and Namayingo districts, which Museveni lost to Bobi Wine in 2021, telling them to vote yellow-the NRM colour-if they want their leaders to be appointed ministers by Museveni in the next Cabinet. ‘The Speaker [Among] comes from Teso. The ministers come from Teso. They are about five or 10 from Teso. Why, because people from Teso voted for Museveni. Are you ready to give President Museveni your votes so that you get ministers here?’ Among asked the Bugiri voters.
On the offensive
From Bugiri, Among took her crusade to Bugweri, another district in the Busoga Sub-region that Bobi Wine won during the 2021 presidential poll. In an effort to see that Museveni retakes Bugweri, Among brought on board the area’s long-serving legislator, Abdu Katuntu, who promised to spearhead efforts to see that the area is turned to the yellow column. ‘Those who know that I’m their captain should organise quickly such that we meet and strategise on how the president [Museveni] wins this area,’ Katuntu, who is for the second time standing as an Independent, said.
Katuntu also claimed that he had decided to support Museveni because when Bobi WIne campaigned in the district, he allegedly asked voters to throw him out on account of working with the NRM. ‘When he [Bobi Wine] campaigned here, he told voters that he doesn’t like me. So, since he said that he doesn’t like me, then what can I do? I’m left with no option but to go where I’m liked,’ said Katuntu, who has been in the House since 2001, forging alliances with Kadaga before dropping her for Among.
Throwing her weight behind Katuntu to be re-elected means Among is sidelining the official NRM flag-bearer, Sadala Wandera, who has the support of Kadaga. This is not the only sub-plot preoccupying Among’s mind. To curtail her movements, NUP decided to replace Alupo with Florence Asio. ‘Anita Among, using the Electoral Commission and the courts recently had the NUP candidate, the FDC candidate and an Independent candidate removed from the voters’ register in order to block them from running against her in Bukedea,’ Bobi Wine wrote on social media this week.
He added: ‘None of those candidates were ever invited for any tribunal hearing until they were informed that the Parish Tribunal had decided to remove them from the register! While we filed a court case, which is still ongoing, we have this morning unveiled comrade Florence Asio as the NUP candidate for Bukedea Woman MP.’
He concluded: ‘We hope that Among will not shamelessly seek to block her as well. The people of Bukedea now have an opportunity to choose between an internationally sanctioned thief of public funds and a young, vibrant leader who will speak for them.’ Asio, however, disappeared at the 11th hour, with Bobi Wine revealing on Thursday evening that ‘her phone numbers, as well as the phone numbers of the comrades she was travelling with from Soroti to Bukedea for her nomination, were all off!’ To many, this was the stuff of movies. Not Bobi Wine, who whined that ‘shamelessly, after committing all these crimes, Anita Among is chest-thumping that she is unopposed!’
Sour grapes?
Mr Chris Obore, the director of communications at Parliament, told Saturday Monitor that NUP should be advised that trying to capture State power through ‘hateful and tribal theatrics’ is unhealthy for Uganda’s national cohesion. ‘Let them also be advised that Anita Among, whom they hate so much, is cherished in Bukedea,’ Obore said. ‘They should appreciate that the NRM is strong and growing stronger in Bukedea and the Teso Sub-region in general. If they want to make political inroads into Teso and other areas, they should leave hatred and blackmail in Kampala and approach other places with honesty and humility.’
He added that NUP has invested heavily in hating and blackmailing the Speaker, yet thousands of women in Bukedea have allowed her to go unopposed because ‘she is their political treasure.’
Mr Obore further added that even NUP’s own candidates in Teso asked the Speaker for forgiveness, confessing that the party had deceived them and only taught them to hate. ‘They informed her that they were summoned to NUP headquarters and asked to pay for their own nomination fees, which most of them refused. Only one candidate in Bukedea was nominated after contributing one million shillings to NUP,’ he said.
According to Obore, the Speaker forgave them and advised them to either join the NRM or learn to avoid ‘politics of insults and blackmail.’
Mr Julius Mucunguzi, the spokesperson of the Uganda Electoral Commission (EC), said during or after elections, any person with a complaint should petition the EC for intervention.
He explained that the Commission has a clear process to handle electoral grievances. ‘If anybody has a complaint, he or she should petition the EC. The Commission will receive the petition and make a determination after hearing from all the parties involved,’ Mr Mucunguzi said. He advised all aggrieved candidates and political parties to follow the lawful procedures and channel their concerns through the EC rather than resorting to public confrontations.