Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni. An endorsement to set President
Museveni on the road to 35 years in power is what the NRM parliamentary
caucus did during its latest retreat at the National Leadership
Institute in Kyankwanzi at the weekend.
Kampala. President Museveni
told members of the ruling NRM’s parliamentary caucus that he is a “war
general, not a classroom general” who can be dislodged with ease, new
details emerging from the ongoing retreat reveal.
Mr Museveni has ruled Uganda since 1986, and
according to sources at the retreat at the National Leadership
Institute, Kyankwanzi, he has appeared cocky and irritated as he berated
dissenters within the party over intrigue.
Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi, who recently told
the new European Union Head of Delegation Kristian Schmidt that he would
contest for President if chosen by the ruling party, chaired last
Saturday’s session where the President went on the attack.
Insiders said Mr Museveni stressed that everything
happening in the countryside gets to his desk, and that he has lately
received intelligence information that some senior NRM officials, whom
he did not name, were secretly mobilising to wrest control of the party
from him. Such individuals, he reportedly noted, were mistaken.
“I am a war general, not a classroom general,” one
source quoted Mr Museveni as having said. “Those who think they can
dislodge me like that are mistaken.”
The room momentarily went quiet as the legislators became tense, another source told this newspaper.
Mr Museveni then delved into a lecture on how he
had contained former confidantes who fell out of favour, naming past
luminaries like Maj. (rtd) John Kazoora, author of the book, Betrayed by
My Leader; the President’s three-time challenger Col. (rtd) Kizza
Besigye; and, former Local Government minister Jaberi Bidandi Ssali as
examples.
His account was that he tried to talk the trio and
others back into the NRM fold but when they refused, “I mobilised the
people against them”. By implication, the President put caucus members
with intentions of jumping ship on notice that they risked a similar
fate.
Mr Amama Mbabazi seized the opportunity to declare that his perception was that all this talk was being directed at him.
He observed, without making any direct reference
to the President’s address or reported fall-out over intrigue within top
echelons of the ruling party of which he is the secretary-general, that
rumour-mongering led to the fall of Mengistu Haile Mariam’s government
in Ethiopia.
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