Michael J. Ssali
22 October 2009
Democratic Party (DP) presidential hopeful Nasser Ntege Ssebagala has said he has been talking to Libya's Muammar Gadaffi, telling him not to support President Museveni's re-election in 2011.
Mr Ssebagala, who is also the Kampala mayor, made the revelation at Bwala in Masaka on Tuesday where he addressed DP village committee leaders from Masaka, Ssembabule, Kalangala, Lyantonde and Rakai districts.
Speaking in Luganda, Mr Ssebagala alleged that President Museveni has a lot of money at his disposal which he could use to manipulate the next general elections, saying the President has access to national coffers and institutions as well as the business community.
"In the past few weeks, I have been telling a few things to Gadaffi and I have completely spoilt that link at least," Mr Ssebagala claimed, weighing on a potential political dynamite over the relationship between Kampala and Tripoli.
During the recent riots, President Museveni said a foreign country was funding the rioters. This was understood to mean Libya but Tripoli recently dismissed the rumours as a creation of the media.
The mayor, however, criticised his fellow members of the opposition for concentrating on abusing Mr Museveni all the time. "The NRM, we must accept, has done some good things. So there is no way you are going to tell the woman whose home is next to a newly-constructed road that the NRM has done nothing all these years," he reminded the people.
He added: "We must devise other tactics of defeating the NRM in the next elections by selecting a capable party president." He said in order to further popularise DP, he was personally going to sink in Shs900 million into adverts on all radio stations, TV networks and all the print media for three months.
Mr Ssebagala, who gave a free green and white notebooks bearing his portrait to every participant, said he is about to publicise his manifesto.
All the three DP presidential hopefuls, Mr Norbert Mao, Mr Samuel Lubega, and Ssebagala, were scheduled to attend the Masaka meeting, but only Mr Ssebaggala turned up. Mr Mao told Daily Monitor that he was travelling to the US but it was not clear why Mr Lubega did not show up.
Other notable absentees at the meeting included Masaka DP Chairman Ben Bukenya, John Kawanga (Masaka Municipality MP) and Mathias Nsubuga (Bukoto South).
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