Veteran journalist Andrew Mwenda has registered as a member of National Unity Platform (NUP), and picked nomination forms to challenge Bobi Wine as party Presidential flag bearer for the 2021 election.
Hitherto a critic of Bobi Wine (Robert Kyagulanyi) and his People Power pressure group, Mwenda is being viewed with suspicion.
Close to the first family members, Mwenda is seen as a regime propagandist and apologist.
Some NUP and People Power supporters suspect he has joined NUP to spy on Bobi Wine for President Yoweri Museveni.
Critical of the Museveni regime in his earlier years as a journalist, Mwenda later changed and started backing the NRM government.
Read: NUP Founders want to take party away from Bobi Wine
Besides, the suspicion, here is what Andrew Mwenda says he hopes to achieve by joining NUP.
ANDREW MWENDA ON JOINING NUP, CHALLENGING BOBI WINE FOR PARTY FLAG
So today I went to the head office of NUP expecting to be lynched! I was prepared to die at the hands of what I thought was largely a collection of intolerant radical extremists.
To my surprise, and except for a few noisy radicals, the young people I met there received me well and with overt excitement.
I went to NUP to register as a member, pick forms to be nominated as candidate for both party leadership and party presidential candidate!
I will be running against Bobi Wine for both positions. Some radicals tried the threaten me but some young ladies held their ground and told them off that I am a citizen of uganda and welcome to join NUP.
I was impressed.
So now I formally declare my intention to seek both the presidency of NUP and to be the party presidential candidate in the next elections.
I will bring civility, strategy, policy awareness, political depth, military and security knowledge and connections, regional and international experience, a large network of contacts across the country, region and globe, and the best fundraising skills the opposition in uganda desperately need.
First we need to make NUP democratic! The party has anointed a president, Bobi Wine – the very sin it claims to be fighting in NRM.
There should be a delegates conference to elect a party leader and I will contest.
Second, I noticed that many assume Bobi Wine is the sole presidential candidate by anointment.
That also must be rejected.
So I am calling for a debate between me and Bobi Wine on the future of NUP and the strategy to defeat Museveni!
I call upon all party members to rally behind this call for internal democracy in NUP.
As the noble Mugisha Muntu never tires of telling us, you cannot give what you do not have.
NUP cannot give democracy to uganda it it cannot practice it internally!
After registering as a member and picking nomination forms, Mwenda wrote:
NUP after all are not as radical as I previously thot! I visited their head office, registered as a member, then picked forms to become presidential candidate.
I found Bobi Wine, like Museveni was being treated as sole presidential candidate for the party.
