A senior Kampala-based bishop has left a number of politicians cursing after he told them to stop flip-flopping from opposition political parties to Gen Yoweri Kaguta Tibuhaburwa Museveni’s ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) in search of big positions and money.
Over the years, a number of opposition politicians have crossed from their parties to join Museveni’s NRM. Some opposition politicians have also defected to other opposition parties.
But Assistant Bishop of Kampala Hannington Mutebi seemed to make a number of politicians uncomfortable when he told mourners attending the funeral service of Yona (Yonasani) Kanyomozi at All Saints Cathedral Nakasero in the capital Kampala that he hated to see politicians who are not principled and keep defecting from one political party to another.
Besides family members, several politicians were part of the congregation attending the funeral service.
These included opposition leader Col (Rtd) Dr Kizza Besigye of the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), Maj Gen (Rtd) Gregg Mugisha Muntu of the Alliance for National Transformation (ANT), Deputy Speaker Thomas Tayebwa, and Beti Kamya Namisango Turwomwe, the current Inspector General of Government (IGG) and former minister of Lands, Housing and Urban Development.
Almost all these politicians had previously quit their ‘original’ parties to join the ruling party or had quit the NRM to join the opposition.
For example, Beti Kamya was previously in Dr Kizza Besigye’s Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), left to form the Uganda Federal Alliance (UFA), before crossing to President Museveni’s ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM).
It is politicians like Beti Kamya that Bishop Mutebi seemed to address.
The bishop told Ugandan politicians to emulate Yona Kanyomozi and to stop political flip flopping.
“He [Kanyomozi] was red in and out, 24/7. You know for him he did not change. That is Yona. He was very principled,” said Mutebi, who was one of Kanyomozi’s friends.
“You know in our time today in our politics where you can even be there for some few months and then you walk away with a very heavy bag and then you go and sort yourself. But this Yona said ‘No, I am very principled.'”
Yona Kanyomozi died in Kampala on August 28. (See his cause of death and his burial program Here and There).
