By Our Reporter
National Unity Platform, current Uganda’s strong opposition party has turned down a request to join the Interparty Organisation for Dialogue (IPOD), saying it is used by the regime of President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni for its own interests.
”You will recall that on 26 April 2021, the leadership of the National Unity Platform met with you and a representative from the Netherlands Institute for Multiparty Democracy (NIMD). At that meeting. you made an impassioned appeal for the National Unity Platform to join IPOD.
”In our response, we expressed gratitude for the invitation to join IPOD and indeed appreciated NIMD for sponsoring a forum that would otherwise be very important in a democracy. Sadly for Uganda, IPOD has been largely instrumentalised by the regime. It has been co-opted and used to legitimise a brutal regime that has no regard or respect for democratic governance,” reads a letter signed by NUP’s Secretary-General, Lewis Lubongoya.
According to NUP, the regime (government) uses it for political gain, far from its intended objective of “strengthening Uganda’s multiparty democracy.”
” You will agree that in the past ten years of IPOD’s existence in Uganda, the democratic space has only shrunk, going from bad to worse every successive year,” further noted NUP.
The youngest but strongest opposition party says Uganda has just come out of the most violent and irregular election in its history that have left hundreds of its supporters abducted, tortured and murdered which matters ”IPOD will never solve” thus finding no reason to join it.
”To date, there are hundreds of political prisoners scattered in different gazetted and non-gazetted detention places, being subjected to all manner of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. The attack on civil society is at an all-time high. Political parties have been suffocated and denied an opportunity to do even the most basic mobilization activities” added NUP’s letter.
The party headed by singer turned politician Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu aka Bobi Wine further noted that they have taken time to study the discussions that have taken place in IPOD over time.
”In our assessment, the regime has turned it into a forum in which Party Principals meet for a cup of tea, followed by a photo opportunity. Serious discussions about the future of our country have been denied audience within the Platform! The National Unity Platform is not keen on taking part in an exercise that is used as a façade to legitimise an otherwise illegitimate rule,” adds NUP.
Lubongoya says that they can only join IPOD after observing principles of fairness, mutual respect, impartiality and transparency. ”A dialogue in which the people of Uganda can feel sufficiently represented! We do not feel that IPOD in its present form offers that opportunity,” noted Lubongoya.
