Peoples President Meets the Press

This is the transcript of the interaction the peoples president had with the journalist in Fortpotal town ,to address various inaccurate media reports circulating around the main stream media from FDC internal fights and police blockade in the campaign trails.

Dr. Kizza Besigye


"We are in the last leg of our campaign,the campaign has been smooth save for the disturbance by the Uganda Police,they have attempted to disrupt our programs".

We had a problem in Mbarara the police without any provocation, they started Teargassing, our people. And many were injured in the process.
The same happened in Kabale.
We had a similar incident in Pajule, Pader, where the police again teargassed the people who had come to listen to our message.
We had running battles with the police in Kitgum, several parts of Karamoja, and Katakwi in Teso.

In Mubende yesterday the police tried to stop our programs but the people over powered the police and we had our rally.
What the police is doing is illegal and what we are complying with is illegal.
The police have no right according to the Public Order. Mgt Act to sanction the activities of political parties.

We shall comply with their demands so that we can do our work.
Even where we have accepted to comply, they go ahead to intimidate and demobilize people from attending our rallies like in Lira.

This is a matter of grave concern. It s danger to our politics and democracy. The police has put in place the para military group called the Crime Preventer to torment our people.

We have a state of criminality. You see the emergency of the notorious Kakooza Mutale and his group with all the support of the state institutions.

I started my campaign late because the police arrested me on the day we were supposed to start our campaign and illegally detained me in Nagalama.

The second challenge is the media. There is no media freedom in this country. In JINJA, while on Baba FM, the whole station was shut down just after five minutes on orders of Hon. Balyeku the owner of the radio.

In KARAMOJA, we booked a talk show on Nena FM. Before we could get to their studio the program the owner said that he had to first get clearance from the Communications Commission.
Hon. Ekanya had to first call the Chairman of UCC who called the owners of the radio to start the program.

In 2011, we bought airtime in many radio station across the country. Many of them refused us from using the air times we had paid for.
We paid UBC 22M to air our announcement and to host us but they refused. We are since in court.

Otherwise the public response has been overwhelming.
Anew thing emerged in this campaign starting from Mbale where the generator stopped running. The masses said let's collect money for the fuel. When they realized that they have collected enough money to buy fuel, they said that they should now collect money to buy guns. I had to tell them that this struggle doesn't need the use of gun.
From there, every where we go, people are collecting money, which money has helped us a lot and we are so grateful.

There has been attacks on my candidature. I told my team that any mad thrown at me, just get a rug and clean the dirt.
We must do anything in our power to minimize friction in our party. We make sure that there is minimum or even no hostility among our members.

Enemies of the party may want to cause us problems.

Me and Gen. Muntu have known each other for more time than any other person in our party. We have mutual respect for each other. On different intervals each one of us had been the boss of the other.


Q&A


Toro is not homogeneous just like any others part of the country. Toro is multi ethnic, multi religious and multi cultural.
In many areas we have been winning.
I can say that the support in the whole region has been on the rise. Unfortunately, because we don't have free and fair election, you cant know how much support each candidate has. Except for the public rallies.
Some of the evidence I took to court, shows how these results have been manipulated. We presented DR Forms showing the right results and Kiggundu declaring different results. Eg a case in where on one polling station I got 500 votes and M7 got 17. Eng. Kiggundu gave my 500 votes to Museveni and he did not give me Museveni's 17 votes. He gave me zero.

On the issue of structures on he ground.
NRM uses propaganda that it has structures in every village. In Tepeth- Karamoja which is one of the most remote area in the country, M7 got zero in a number of polling stations. How did he get zero where he claims that he has 30 people at every village level.

We have had grassroots elections in 2009 where we had l also competed in my village in Rukungiri.

It's not true that NRM is at the grassroots and FDC is up there. We have structures but are weakened by the intimidation from GISO, Police, RDC who even refuse our people to access NAADS and govt service.

I have not made any U- Turn, my candidature about working for reforms which is a commitment of our party. Am in this election cause some of our leaders are not resolute as we expected them. The question of Free and Fair Election is a matter of life and death.
We have not had free election in the 53 years of our Independence. Every president is bombed out of office.

My struggle is a liberation struggle. What one would call a U turn is if I joined the NRM.

TDA is a work in progress. JPAM is not part of TDA. He hasn't signed anything with TDA. Myself and the party are signatories to the TDA and therefore we must abide by the TDA resolution.

About Kakooza Mutale 

Kakooza Mutale is one of the reason we need reforms. That Mutale outfit is illegal.
Any body who says that we must go to any election must be a joker of the century.
We can't have militia in the next election.

What should we do? We must have reforms. The biggest problem is that we have a leadership deficit in this country. The leaders are detached from the population. They Forward their selfish interests.
The people know what they want. We have seen MPs being bought for 5 Mn to change the constitution. Recently we saw MPs being given 110 Mn. We have seen priests given hand outs and they say things which are a disgrace to the color.
The people of this country are Supreme. So if they want reforms who is that person that can deny them these reforms? We shall rally the masses to demand what they want.

On Agenda for Elections

We have had strong manifestos which the NRM is driving on like the 25,000/= given to the elders was in our manifesto. The students Loan Scheme, Graduated tax and many other programs were in our manifesto.
But even when they implement these ideas, they do it badly because they are not committed to these programs.
God Bless You
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