By FREDERIC MUSISI and RICHARD WANAMBWA
Tuesday, October 8 2013 at 11:08
Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni. PHOTO | AFP
Uganda's President Yoweri Museveni yesterday said arch-opponent Kizza Besigye and Kampala Lord Mayor Erias Lukwago should apologise, stop fighting losing battles, repent, and be re-admitted into the ruling party.
The remarks drew a quick-fire rejoinder from Dr Besigye, a former comrade and personal doctor, who has now run in three bitterly-contested elections against him.
“Apologise for what? Well, he makes himself a judge and that is what we are fighting,” Dr Besigye told the Daily Monitor newspaper on phone. “I am not surprised because Museveni is out of reality. He is not aware that he has completely destroyed the country.”
The President who was speaking at the opening of a multi-billion shilling market in Wandegeya in Kampala repeated his accusation that the two politicians oppose development and lie to the common man.
The two have since the disputed 2011 elections drawn crowds in the city during protests against misrule and corruption in government, attracting brutal clampdowns by State security forces.
“Just like [former city mayor Nasser] Ssebagala, Lukwago and Besigye should apologise and we shall gladly accept them back home,” President Museveni said in vernacular.
He dismissed the three politicians as “narcissistic.”
“Kampala’s problems are too many. In fact, starting with the decision by you people to vote self-centred politicians,” he said. “My votes in the same area have all along been stolen in favour of the opposition; who don’t do anything for you, but I cannot abandon you because you are my people.”
The ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) has consistently lost elections in Kampala.
Dr Besigye fell out with NRM in 1999 after writing a highly critical paper accusing the NRM government of becoming undemocratic and intolerant, and derailing from the objectives for which Mr Museveni led a guerrilla war between 1981 and 1986
SOURCE: www.africareview.com
