KAMPALA – Rubaga North legislator Moses Kasibante has criticized the National Unity Platform (NUP) party describing their vetting as immature. He accuses the NUP Election Committee for assigning flagship to candidates who are enemies of change.
This comes after the incumbent who was among the 11 DP block members that joined the National Unity Platform was denied the flag in favor of KCCA speaker Abubaker Kawalya ahead of the 2021 polls.
“NUP limited us to a process called vetting in determining candidates of various positions of leadership. The challenges are enormous but the solutions are not there, what it has done is what it would do,” he said.
Ksibante says many of the nominated flag bearers in NUP are National Resistance Movement (NRM) agents.
“Hajj Kawalya enjoys a political marriage with the NRM and his bid to become speaker was morally and financially supported by the state, everybody knows this. Kawalya works for NRM and this was evidenced when he was overwhelmingly supported and voted by NRM councilors to become KCCA speaker,” Kasibante said.
Kasibante said that he is now going to contest on an independent ticket in Rubaga North parliamentary race in next year’s general elections.
The legislator emphasized that he would not appeal to the NUP committee but instead took his appeal to the Rubaga North voters as he addressed a media briefing yesterday.
“Today as I speak, we have infiltrators, agents of the devil as candidates of NUP and this may not be limited to NUP but to also other political parties opposed to the devil of the dictator in Uganda. So we cannot just sit back and sanitize some processes when the devil is entering agents within our mighty opposition forces.”
However, NUP spokesperson Joel Ssenyonyi denies rumors of NUP having handed over flags to NRM members.
“It is not true that the flag was given to an NR member, we just unveiled NUP to the public three months ago, so even Hon Kasibante just joined from wherever he came from. We have people that joined from NRM, DP, FDC and even those that were not belonging anywhere who joined us and we welcomed everyone to join us,” he explained.
Kasibante who will now tussle it out with Minister Betty Kamya and Abubaker Kawlya for the Rubaga North slot, said that in case the KCCA Speaker is voted to parliament it will be very easy for him to sell out the constituency to President Museveni in exchange for a ministerial post.
“I cannot allow that to happen. I’m coming as independent but I’m still a member of NUP and strong support of Robert Kyagulanyi.”