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Museveni Using Obote As Scare-Crow - Awori

New Vision (Kampala)
NEWS
August 13, 2004
Posted to the web August 13, 2004

By Josephine Maseruka
Kampala
Samia Bugwe North MP Aggrey Awori yesterday said President Yoweri Museveni was
deliberately using former president Dr. Milton Obote as a scare-crow to gain
sympathy from the Baganda, who are demanding for federalism.
Awori, a former presidential candidate, was reacting to reports that Museveni
had planned to meet the self-exiled Obote in Lusaka recently to woo him back to
Uganda.
At his Parliament office, Awori said in 1996, when the Uganda People's Congress
and the Democratic Party formed an alliance to contest the presidential
elections with Dr. Paul Ssemwogerere as a Muganda candidate, "Museveni created
another Obote-scare that he was coming back and had reached Kisumu and
therefore the Baganda should not be deceived by the UPC/DP Muganda candidate."
"Using his spokesman, John Nagenda, to spread propaganda, he created political
hysteria that the man who destroyed the Buganda kingdom (Obote) is returning
under the guise of the UPC/DP coalition," he said.
Awori said Museveni recently put army leaders on katebe (undeployed them) under
the guise of senior staff training.
"It was another way of neutralising possible challenge to his authority in the
army," he said.
Awori said Museveni was scared after former mayor Nasser Sebaggala was received
from the airport recently by a mammoth crowd, which included his bodaboda fans.
He said Museveni is almost by himself after many of his historical and senior
advisers like Eria Kategeya and Major General Mugisha Muntu deserted him and
have joined the new political dispensation of the Forum for Democratic Change.
"The youth and women, who Museveni has always taken for granted as his strong
supporters, are getting disillusioned. Women in rural areas are being harassed
by micro-finance institutions and the youth cannot find jobs," he said.
He said the external debt has jumped to all time high figure of sh US$6bn and
the security situation in the north cannot be ascertained " despite the
propaganda that Joseph Kony the NRA rebel leader is about to be captured."
Awori said that the number of Internally Displaced people (IDPs) has now soared
to all time record of 2.5 million out of the five million Acholis and Langis.
Awori said," These are indeed worrying developments to warrant at he Obote
scare to draw attention. "

   

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