As an aspirant Attorney, Orator and Leader, I sincerely grew up admiring, Norbert Mao, and often when i was asked to mention my role model in Uganda politics, i would simply shout out Mao’s name. #WhisperEyeNews #Uganda #UgandaNews
I looked up to him as a gentleman, smart and intelligent, and whenever we both met I would tell him please comrade I want in the future to be like you.
Whenever some DP members and other political party members spoke ill about Norbert like how he was in the same bed with NRM a party that DP and other Opposition parties are competing against, I would defend Mao because I did not believe their allegations.
However, things started turning against me. The Mao I knew had turned into a different Mao. I noticed that he had started to play sectarian politics plus individual politics and whenever party members would challenge him about his actions, he would instead say that they were against him because he was not a Muganda.
He further fought against party members by the use of police with the full support of the regime and surprisingly he would support Museveni’s agenda moreover a person he publicly calls a problem to Uganda. For sure, I realized that Mao had gone astray and from then I also started doubting his allegiance to DP.
I agree with Mao on the principle that a political party may work with a government in power but NOT work within another party as Mao has done regarding DP working within NRM. In order for a party to work with another party and avoid working within and being swamped, such a party like DP should have presented its agenda to NRM and used that agenda as a condition for working with NRM.
Otherwise, the motivation for Mao to work within NRM was an allure for the job offer which was dangled to him and his colleague Siranda Blacks the party Secretary General. In a principled stand cooperation arrangement, DP would have come up with its own agenda and used it as a bargaining chip to work with NRM and if NRM violated the agreement to honor the agenda protocol, then DP ministers or officials working with NRM would pull out of cabinet or government.
As it stands now, Mao has gone to work within NRM and as the DP President or son, Mao sold his father called DP. As per the agreement signed between Museveni and Mao on behalf of DP, Mao will now be in full support of NRM’s policy.
You now wonder how DP members in Parliament like Hon. Lumu Richard, Hon. Ssebamala Richard and Hon. Luttamaguzi Paulson including the DP Whip shall support the ideas of NRM on the floor of Parliament tabled by Mao as their DP President and the Minister of Justice and Constitutional Affairs serving in NRM government! This is the irony of joining a man who has twice amended the constitution after bribing legislators to profit himself, and a man who has vowed to destroy the Opposition before the next election.
You sign your party up to an unconstitutional party coalition without any demonstration of internal democracy and insist on continuing to occupy the party presidency effectively acting autocratically! No, Mao yours was political survival but not DP’s and national benefit.
The real irony is Mao being charged with constitutional affairs and constitutional reforms. Mao’s cooperation agreement with Museveni will not help DP and Uganda, but it will help Mao to earn a living. Mao got a job in other words.
However, at a later stage, his poor decision or sacrilege to sell his father’s DP to Museveni will haunt Mao just like Aggrey Awori died crying.
By Denis Mugonza Waggumbulizi | Advocate, Researcher & Entrepreneur
