Tabu Butagira
19 January 2006
Arua — UPC presidential candidate Miria Obote Kalule ended her five-day tour of West Nile on Sunday.
She pledged to establish a truth and reconciliation commission, akin to that of post-apartheid South Africa to heal the wounds of Uganda's debilitating and divisive history.
This, she said, would help find out the truth regarding all the previous wars that have characterised our country's turbulent past, unite the nation and reconcile its disaggregated citizenry.
"We want a strong nation. We do not want a Uganda where one part is developed and for the rich while the other less developed and for the very, very poor," she said.
Pledges
Her other promises included revamping the education and health systems for quality service delivery, reactivating the railway industry for cheap movement of merchandise upcountry, building new hydropower plants to supply cheap electricity for rapid industrialisation and establishing a special fund under the Ministry of Education to Finance the university education of talented, but poor high school students.
According to press reports, Miria's maiden stopover at Pakwach Town Council - the gateway to West Nile - turned out to be her biggest rally ever since she embarked on a vote-canvassing spree upcountry.
Interestingly, it was at this very venue in the first week of December, last year, that President Yoweri Museveni received the most miserable audience during his "wealth-for-all" campaign in the region! Maybe, the locals shunned Museveni then because they thought he was standing on a UPC pedestal and chiding the party.
Village campaigns
So buoyed by the overwhelming turn up, Miria realised she had got a place to elbow colleagues in the race and altered her programme to delve into the rural hinterlands of Parombo, Erussi, Panyimur, Warr, Zeu, Nyapea and Paidha town before addressing a gathering in Nebbi town at Boma Ground the following day.
That Miria was able to spend two days out of her tight campaign schedule talking about the opportunities she envisages in Nebbi, which has just about 170,000 registered voters.
For starters, the mega Sir Albert Cook Bridge built by the Obote government on River Nile at Pakwach has somehow immortalised the fallen former head of state to the area residents and telling them that the UPC government did nothing in the face of this gigantic viaduct is just incomprehensible.
Besides, most reputable secondary schools in the region such as Mvara, Ombaci, Koboko, Warr, Muni and Ediofe Girls' were either constructed or upgraded during the reign of UPC. Also under the party regimes (1966/71 & 1980/5), the main district hospitals of Nebbi, Arua and Yumbe were built.
Blighted facilities
Miria says her frustration is that the incumbent government has not only failed to maintain the high service levels established in these institutions then, but also ruined them to such an ambit that the health facilities lack basic antibiotics and other essential drugs, while the school laboratories have become skeletal structures, without chemicals to undertake practical science lessons.
"Why couldn't President Museveni build on what other previous governments had put in place instead of destroying everything?" she asked sadly.
The point she stressed was that the responsibility for ensuring the socio-economic welfare of the ordinary Ugandans was never an invention of the Movement government and that the UPC addressed that assiduously too.
In fact she said the much-touted Universal Primary Education programme was an idea of the second UPC government, which the Movement people stole and are messing up.
Sympathies
Drawing from the illustrious legacies of the previous UPC regimes, Miria raised her voice and said: "I am sorry that I was not able to bring the Father of the Nation, Dr Apollo Milton Obote (RIP) back home alive, but the Mother of the Nation Miria Obote Kalule is here and will take good care of you. UPC is a party that delivers. Vote Miria and you will not regret".
She said the Movement government had deliberately marginalised northern Uganda for the last two decades. Miria further alleged that Museveni blocked construction of hydropower plants on River Nyagak in Nebbi and Olewa in Arua, yet the Italian and Netherlands governments had respectively staked money for the projects.
"Is it because the people of this area do not deserve to have cheap hydro-electricity? How can one say such a government loves you people?" she asked.
Electricity, just like tarmacking of the West Nile highway, have been key demands of the locals from this government and the failure to provide them has consistently caused Museveni to lose votes in the region.
Ombaci killings
Now that 80 percent of the road works have been completed, the establishment hoped to use it as the political bait to woo votes, but that will not come easily especially after Miria's team introduced new difficult variables in the already complicated political equation in the region.
Dr Moses Apiliga, the principal special adviser to the UPC president on foreign affairs, stirred emotions here with claims that Museveni's premier Front for National Salvation (Fronasa) rebel outfit - under the UNLA/military commission - brought mayhem in the West Nile.
Apiliga said as the then minister for supplies and a son of West Nile, he took special interest to follow up the horrendous atrocities committed against the people of West Nile to avenge late dictator Idi Amin's purported bloody rule.
"Me and Mr Museveni, who was then minister of regional cooperation (from defence) were sitting near each other on the 4th floor of Parliament House. He (Museveni) sent his Fronasa forces to West Nile and they are the ones who killed people at Ombaci and committed other atrocities in Maracha displaced people's camp, Nebbi and Moyo districts," Apiliga said and promised to adduce evidence before any commission of inquiry.
On July 22, at least 53 internally displaced civilians, who sought protection with the Verona Fathers at Ombaci were reportedly shot dead by government troops who accused them of sheltering remnants of the vanquished Uganda Army soldiers. Their remains have been interred in a mass grave under the leafy eucalyptus trees at Ombaci.
Gov't account
Previously, the storyline - as told by Movement officials including the President - that had almost become the ultimate truth, was that the little known Ombaci massacres were orchestrated by Obote's government troops and that his 2nd tenure was a "killer regime".
So is Miria just trying to whitewash her husband's supposed guilt or were the government functionaries peddling falsehoods to malign the previous regimes? The answers to these questions could only be found through an ad hoc committee or indeed a commission of inquiry where eyewitnesses testify.
The Minister of State for Information, Dr James Nsaba Buturo, admits the issue of Ombaci massacres is sticky and decisive but says, "We shall address the allegations comprehensively. But of course the allegations are not true and real lies".
Miria comforting talk and illustrious blue print on how to manage this country better and orderly was well received and convinced some souls, but will that translate into many votes for her? That is the million-dollar question.
Even if it does not, she would have succeeded in presenting the alternative view of the UPC, spruced up the party's dented image and broadened its support. It is this latent challenge that could make the campaigns a lot messier in West Nile as candidates scramble for the region's votes.
Perhaps, as candidates feel the heat of dwindling following in the region, the campaign language could change from modest to crude and the general aura lugubrious.
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