KAMPALA: Following claims by the Democratic Party president that the former FDC president has been holding secret meetings with President Museveni, opposition strongman Dr Kizza Besigye has described Norbert Mao as a desperate and unguided missile.
During a Twitter chat hosted by US-based journalist Remmy Bahati on Tuesday, February 22, 2022, Mao claimed that Besigye was often holding secret talks with Museveni.
That is why I am calling out some party leaders for their hypocrisy; they are engaged in secret talks with the ruling NRM. They receive emissaries from the NRM, but they want to pretend, “Mao said.
You know very well that Col. Dr. Kizza Besigye was in secret talks with Yoweri Museveni. It was in the newspapers, it was confirmed by Andrew Mwenda and Conrad Nkutu, “he added.
But Dr. Besigye dismissed the claims.
Is Nobert Mao desperate and becoming an unguided missile? I’ve never been in secret meetings or dialogue with Museveni, “he tweeted.
The four-time presidential candidate shared a link to a storey by the Observer newspaper titled “How Museveni, Besigye talks were planned,” which he claimed was what Mao was alluding to.
Here’s the media storey referred to in his claim. We always insisted on transparent, structured, and inclusive dialogue for four transitions, “he said.
According to the Observer story, Nkutu, then a managing editor at Monitor Publications Ltd., and Mwenda, the managing editor of the Independent magazine, met Besigye in 2011 at his home and persuaded him to hold talks with Museveni in a bid to diffuse the tension emanating from the 2011 presidential election that had been marred by allegations of rigging.
But Besigye said there would need to be a number of conditions before he would agree to meet Museveni, the most important being that the talks must be transparent and open to all political organisations. Besigye told Nkutu that Uganda “does not belong to Museveni and Besigye, but all Ugandans.”
He also made it clear to Nkutu that he did not want his supporters to perceive him as someone who cuts deals with Museveni behind the curtain. He told Nkutu it was such a modus operandi that had led to the failure of the federo talks between the central government and Mengo in 2004. In subsequent meetings, more terms and conditions were discussed, some of which were agreed upon, others rejected.
In recent days, Mao has launched a verbal war against the opposition National Unity Platform party headed by Robert Kyagulanyi, aka Bobi Wine. This was after the party criticised the move by the government to spend over Shs1.7b to fly Speaker of Parliament Jacob Oulanyah to the US for treatment.
Mao, who hails from the same northern region as Oulanyah, treated the position by the NUP, whose popular support is in Buganda, as a tribal attack against the Speaker of Parliament.
