The exiled leader of the Uganda Peoples Congress, former president Apollo Milton Obote, will retire after the party’s delegates’ conference slated for next month, an official has said.

The Secretary General of UPC’s Constitutional Steering Committee (CSC), Mr Peter Walubiri, told journalists at the party headquarters at Uganda House yesterday that Obote would be leaving the helm of the party he has led since independence.

He was responding to questions about the current divisions within UPC and whether Obote was to blame for the crisis. “Obote should not be blamed at all,” Walubiri said. “The old man is away in Lusaka conducting other business. We are waiting for the delegates’ conference when we expect him to retire in honour.”

Contacted after the press conference, Walubiri told Daily Monitor that Obote, who has lived in Zambia since his ouster in 1985, was “very categorical” about his position on retiring and that someone else will take over.

Walubiri’s media briefing came after two Lango MPs Omara Atubo (Otuke) and Cecilia Ogwal (Lira Municipality) accused Obote and the CSC he appointed of trying to impose a predetermined leadership on UPC.

Atubo had said the party’s top leadership had employed “vicious schemes to lock out key figures” in the party who they thought would take on top leadership positions.

No scheme

But Walubiri dismissed the accusations. “There is no scheme to lock out anybody,” he said. “It is only Ogwal, who came late, who was locked out otherwise all other MPs were elected at the branch level. If there was such a scheme it would be so hopeless to get only Ogwal.”

Ogwal was locked out of the UPC’s primary elections in Lira while Atubo’s elections was reportedly nullified on grounds that he had arrived late at the polling station and had asked somebody who had been elected to vacate her seat for him.

The CSC chairman Hajji Badru Wegulo, who had given this same account on Wednesday, yesterday gave a different version. “There have been hilarious press reports that Omara who was elected on his branch executive had his name removed from the list by party headquarters,” he said.

“CSC categorically denies these baseless allegations. We have not yet received the returns of the elections from Otuke Constituency from the Lira District Organising Committee....The information we have is that Atubo was elected on his branch executive and his election still stands.”

However, Wegulo maintained that Ogwal had arrived at the venue after the elections had taken place. “It is a basic principle of democratic practice for politicians to accept the outcome of an election arrived at transparently whether one wins or loses,” he said. “In the case of Ogwal we clearly recall that in 1980 during the UPC primaries, she lost, petitioned twice and accepted her loss the third time.” Wegulo said Ogwal had not filed her complaint to the District Organising Committee as required by the party constitution.

Mighty Congress

Walubiri warned that the two MPs protest could not scare the “mighty Congress”.
Asked whether there was anyone earmarked to replace Obote, Walubiri said, “We have very many people who can democratically stand to be elected.” Obote caused waves when he announced earlier this year that he would be returning to Uganda later in the year.

The government said although he was free to return to the country, the former president would have to account for the massacre of Ugandans in Luweero Triangle during his regime.

- Monitor, Sept. 23, 2005 -