Ground is ripe to force Museveni out – Besigye

Opposition leader, Dr Kizza Besigye, has told his supporters to roll their sleeves and organise more public protests until the NRM government is forced out of power.
He said the ground is ripe for popular protests to force a regime change – even before 2016. Besigye was the main face of the walk-to-work protests which rocked Kampala and other major towns a couple of weeks ago. The protests lost steam after he was violently arrested and had to seek medical treatment abroad.
“With the general discontent within the population, it is possible to have the regime out of power before 2016,” Besigye said, adding that what is lacking is a clear and strategic leadership to mobilise the masses.

Enforcing pressure: Kizza Besigye says

President Museveni can be forced out

 before the end of his term in 2016.

He told his party that their focus should not be on capturing power in 2016, but long before then. Besigye was presenting the key-note address at the opening of a two-day FDC retreat at the Ankrah Foundation in Mukono municipality on Saturday.
Under the theme ‘Auditing the 2011 Elections: What Next?’, the retreat, which attracted many party members, especially those that lost in the elections, sought to assess what went wrong in those elections, and to strategise for the next polls in 2016.
Besigye’s performance in the 2011 elections was his worst since he first contested for the presidency in 2001. He garnered only 26% of the vote, a decline from the 37% he scored in the 2006 elections.
The party also suffered major losses in parliamentary and local council elections. For instance, FDC secured only 29 seats in the 9th Parliament, compared to 37 in the previous House.

More protests

Besigye said the party now needs to raise the people’s consciousness such that they come out and wrestle power from the NRM regime “the Tunisia-Egypt style”.
“I’m sure the price of fuel is going to increase next week because of the dollar, which [increase in fuel price] will push prices further up. KACITA [Kampala City Traders Association] is going to demonstrate. The ground is ripe for a change of regime even before 2016,” Besigye stressed.
To exploit the prevailing discontent, he suggested that the party members should link people’s suffering to corruption in government and cause masses to pour onto the streets peacefully to demand a change of government. Another fertile ground is students, especially those in universities and other tertiary institutions, Besigye pointed out.
He said the students are disgruntled because of the exorbitant tuition fees and only need to be organised for mass protests.
“Target students in all these universities that are paying Shs 3 million for a semester; there is already massive discontent,” he said.
He noted the need for a higher level of organisational leadership within the party, starting at the grassroots, with a clear strategy to guide the masses, which he admitted was still lacking in FDC.
“For the moment, efforts must [be concentrated on] unity of the oppressed. As political parties, we must join hands; it is difficult for an individual party to cause regime change in Uganda,” he said.

Bowing out

Besigye underscored the need for FDC to strengthen its leadership, considering that some of its current leaders, including himself, will hand over leadership in 2014. The FDC constitution bars Besigye from serving as party president for more than two terms.
“As you are aware, I will soon bow out from the leadership of the party; so, you should put party leadership from the grassroots level to the top into serious consideration,” he said, as some in the audience murmured that 2014 is not the best time for him to step aside.
Besigye, however, emphasised that he will have to hand over leadership to another person, although he pledged to continue opposing President Museveni’s government.
“As strugglists, we shall remain in the struggle until the dictator is dislodged from power,” he said.

FDC compromised

Besigye said he was not happy with the conduct of some FDC party officials, saying many party leaders, even at national level, have been compromised by the NRM.
“It had even become difficult in NEC (national executive committee) to tell who is FDC and who is not, because some NEC members are serving the interests of the regime,” Besigye said.
He added that in the run-up to the elections, the party invested a lot of money in building grassroots structures, but that by the time of the elections, most of the structures had been compromised by the NRM.
“In the elections, we thought we had FDC agents and yet they were rigging for NRM,” he said.

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