By Andrew Irumba
Kampala: As the 2020/2021 general elections draw closer, the presidential aspirant and senior military officer of Uganda People’s Defence Forces, (UPDF) Rtd.Lieutenant General Henry Tumukunde is set to officially launch his presidential bid and manifesto that will be his agenda in case he wins the forthcoming elections.
The historic scientific event will take place tomorrow Wed. August 12, 2020 at 10am at his offices located along Impala Avenue, Kololo, Kampala, which is next to Multi Choice Uganda.
The retired army senior officer declared his ambitions on 3 May 2020, to become President of Uganda and vowed to stand against his former boss President Museveni in the 2021 elections.
Few days after declaring to stand against his boss, Tumukunde was arrested over treason charges by a joint security team led by the head of the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (CID) Grace Akullo after raiding his private office in Kololo,where he is now slated launch his campaigns.
This was after the retired general, who also served as Security minister between 2016 and 2017, allegedly uttered some statements during a television interview in which he appeared to support Rwandan government to intervene in Uganda’s politics.
“The arrest follows his utterances in a series of radio and television interviews, which seek to foster hatred that might lead to intercommunity violence, fomenting and glorifying violence in general. He in addition, calls on the support of a neighbouring country to support him in removing the current leadership with or without the ballot,” said police spokesman Fred Enanga then.
Who Is Tumukunde?
Gen.Tumukunde left law school at Makerere University in the early 1980s to join the rebel National Resistance Army (NRA/M) in a guerrilla struggle that brought President Yoweri Museveni to power in 1986.
After seizing power, he served as the head of the army intelligence CMI, chief of the counterintelligence agency the Internal Security Organisation and as Security minister.
In 1994, he was elected as a Constituent Assembly delegate for Rubabo County in western Uganda district of Rukungiri. The Assembly was tasked with drawing up the country’s Constitution, which was promulgated on October 8, 1995.
He later fell out with President Museveni and was arrested in 2005 and charged in a court martial for “uttering statements prejudicial to good discipline and order in the army.” He was convicted after an eight-year trial and sentenced to a caution, allowing him to walk free. He had been detained two years before the trial began.
Ten years later, in 2015, he was promoted from the rank of brigadier to that of a lieutenant-general and retired from the army.
He became one of the key mobilisers for the President and was credited for dismantling the network of former Prime Minister John Patrick Amama Mbabazi, who had challenged Mr Museveni for the presidency in 2016. He was then appointed to Cabinet as Security minister but was dropped barely two years later.
He retreated to private life emerging early this year to declare his intentions to run for the presidency in next year’s elections.
