As part of the political shock that followed the 2021 General Election, Mr Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, alias Bobi Wine, the National Unity Platform (NUP) presidential flag-bearer, became the first Opposition candidate to defeat President Museveni in the island district of Kalangala.
President Museveni, who has been in power since 1986, had made the islands-known in Buganda as Ssese-a National Resistance Movement (NRM) bastion. Mr Museveni wasn’t the only victim in the 2021 poll because at the parliamentary level, his party, the ruling NRM’s candidates, suffered defeats.
One of the chastening defeats the NRM suffered at the parliamentary level came in Kyamuswa County, where the voters threw out Ms Carolyn Birungi Nanyondo. They cast their lots with Mr Moses Kabuusu, then a member of the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), but who has since decamped to the newly constituted People’s Front for Freedom (PFF).
Like many island precincts, Kyamuswa was always dominated by the NRM to the extent that its cadre, Timothy Mutekanga Lwanga, had become synonymous with it. Before the NRM shot its way to power, Lwanga had been one of its supporters in the external wing.
His brother, Andrew Lutaaya, was among the first supporters of Mr Museveni’s National Resistance Army (NRA) when it waged war against Milton Obote’s regime. Lutaaya not only surrendered his lorry to be used by the NRM to attack Kabamba military barracks, in the process announcing that guerrilla war, but he was also part of the guerrillas who gathered at Mathiew Rukikaire’s home in Makindye to mastermind this attack that eventually didn’t go according to plan.
Kabuusu aggrieved
Lutaaya, on the accounts that he knew Lake Victoria like the back of his hand, was tasked with smuggling guerrilla leader Museveni across the water body into Kenya whenever he wanted to go and visit his family in Sweden. With such a history, Lwanga felt that he would always dominate Kyamuswa as he represented it in the Sixth Parliament and Seventh Parliament.
In 2006, Kabuusu, then a member of the Democratic Party (DP), pulled off a shock win over Lwanga. However, the Opposition’s victory couldn’t be expanded during the 2011 General Election because Lwanga reclaimed his seat when he defeated Kabuusu with a difference of just 317 votes.
A dissatisfied Kabuusu was compelled to drag Lwanga to the High Court, accusing him of committing numerous election offences and illegal practices. These included: bribing voters with life jackets, alcoholic drinks, and feasts at or after public rallies.
Kabuusu claimed that on the Polling Day, at Buwanga Polling Station, Lwanga, who was sporting a yellow long-sleeved shirt with a yellow hat bearing the wording ‘vote NRM’ in the company of armed policemen, including Asaph Owamanya, then officer-in-charge of Bukasa, usurped the powers of the presiding officer and gave orders to the polling officials and police on what to do.
The orders that Lwanga gave, Mr Kabuusu claimed, included ordering the arrests of certain persons; ordering the presiding officer to allow ineligible voters to vote; chasing away his polling agents; intercepting voters on line at the polling station, or on their way to the polling station; and those at Buwanga Village, giving them money while telling them to vote for him.
Justice Alfonse Owiny-Dollo, then a High Court judge, dismissed the case, saying Kabuusu hadn’t particularly proven the allegation of voter bribery.
‘This only serves to cast serious doubt on whether the first respondent [Lwanga] had, upon giving her the life jacket the previous day, really asked her to vote for him, and made the alleged public declaration that she had converted to his side. In her last affidavit, she deposed that when the first respondent [Lwanga] asked her in public to convert to his side, she objected.
How then could he have declared that she had converted to his side, and the crowd greeted it with ululation? Equally, I wonder which version I should take regarding what the 1st Respondent’s alleged offer to her of a job was. Was it in a pharmacy or in a project, as she inconsistently states?’ Justice Owiny-Dollo said, prompting Kabuusu to take the battle to the Court of Appeal, where he was equally unsuccessful.
Lwanga bows out
In the run to the 2016 polls, two things happened that shocked the body politic of Kyamuswa: one was that Lwanga retired from elective politics. The second was that Kabuusu, who thought he could take advantage, defected from the DP to join the NRM.
He claimed that while many other parties were busy conducting grassroots elections in preparation for the 2016 elections, DP members were bickering with no tangible preparation taking place, especially in Kalangala District, where he hails from. Kabuusu further rationalised his decision to decamp to NRM, saying he was asked by his supporters in Kyamuswa to join NRM, a suggestion he honoured upon realising that his continued stay in the DP was not paying off.
While Kabuusu was decamping, the Opposition was facing a crisis in Kalangala as NRM candidates swept the majority of the elective seats in Kalangala due to the failure by the Opposition to field candidates. In 2016, no Opposition candidate was vying for any of the parliamentary seats in Kalangala.
The problem for Kabuusu was that he was defeated in the NRM primaries by Nanyondo. Undeterred, Kabuusu decided to stand as an Independent but still lost to Nanyondo in the 2016 elections with a difference of 582 votes. Yet the politics of Kalangala as an island was changing with many voters getting tired of NRM’s unfulfilled promises.
Up for grabs
In 2021, NRM paid a cost when NUP, which had been constituted, swept elections in Kalangala not only at the presidential level but also local government level. At the parliamentary level, Kabuusu bounced back, albeit on the FDC ticket, by beating Nanyondo by a difference of 392 votes. Kabuusu, who is now part of the PFF, has to contend with NUP, which has fronted Daudi Nkambo Ssenungi. The NUP has made it clear to voters in Buganda that they should vote for the umbrella.
‘Wherever you see an umbrella, you tick. These are people we have scrutinised. You vote for them because we are sure they are going to deliver,’ Bobi Wine has been telling voters in Buganda during the campaign trail. The NRM has, for the third time, fronted Nanyondo, and its officials say they are out to reclaim the islands.
‘The government has done so much in expanding the oil palm project, improving water transport, electricity, water supply, and better roads. We believe if islanders are reminded of all this, they will trust NRM to deliver more,’ said Mr Elly Ntegge, the spokesperson of the NRM in Kalangala.
MP for Lwemiyaga wants E.C to give him access to the purported academic papers that Gen. Rwashande presented to E.C. on his nomination as a candidate competing for Lwemiyaga parliamentary seat. Sekikubo says Gen. Rwashande never studied and that he used forged papers, though he was later after nomination, awarded a degree from Nkuna University.