Gulu NRM supporters defect to Besigye’s IPC
By Timothy Nsubuga
10th January 2011
Dr. Kizza Besigye with NRM defectors in Gulu
A sizeable number of NRM supporters from the northern Uganda district of Gulu abandoned their candidate incumbent President Yoweri Museveni last week and defected to Dr. Kizza Besigye’s Inter Party Cooperation [IPC].
Dressed in candidate Museveni’s yellow “Pakalast” campaign T-Shirts, the defecting NRM supporters, many of whom were women, stood before Dr. Besigye, raised their hands, and flashed FDC’s “V” for victory symbol as a way of declaring their allegiance to Besigye’s camp.
Dr. Besigye, who was addressing a mammoth crowd in Gulu, welcomed the NRM defectors into the Inter Party Cooperation [IPC] umbrella and urged them to internalise IPC’s top five policy pledges and make sure they can explain them to others.
He also urged the defectors to recruit at least five new people to join the IPC family. Other than that, the former NRM supporters were also asked to make regular financial sacrifices of at least 500shillings to fund IPC’s campaigns.
Asked whether the IPC had not merely dressed its own supporters in candidate Museveni’s campaign T-Shirts to give an impression that they were NRM defectors, one of Dr. Besigye’s Aides told Uganda Correspondent that those are NRM tactics.
“…We despise political deceit in all its forms. Those are NRM tactics. When we say change is coming to Uganda, we mean every word of that. Our government will make it its business to set in place reforms that will ensure that the current NRM political culture of fraud and deceit is reversed forever”, said the Aide.
The FDC party president Dr. Kizza Besigye, who is also the presidential candidate for the Inter Party Cooperation [IPC], is challenging President Museveni for the presidency of Uganda for the third time. His previous challenges were in 2001 and 2006.
In both cases, Dr. Besigye challenged Museveni’s victory in the Supreme Court which ruled that the elections were not held in accordance with the law, that they were marred by state inspired violence, intimidation, and vote rigging among many other things.
The Supreme Court however found that those irregularities did not “substantially” affect the final outcome in both elections and upheld Museveni’s re-election. Please log into www.ugandacorrespondent.com every Monday to read our top stories and anytime mid-week for our news updates.
