Flamboyant national vice president of the Democratic Party Fred Mukasa Mbidde is bitter after he was sidelined at the last hour and removed from the list of people to attend the National Resistance Movement (NRM) retreat for newly elected Members of Parliament (MP) at the National Leadership Institute in Kyankwanzi .
Mbidde revealed that a few weeks back, he was contacted by the retreat organizers who told him that President Museveni wanted him to be part of the selected scholars and experts who will address the newly elected MPs on various local and international issues that move the government.
Mbidde was supposed to school MPs on the importance of the East African Community to Uganda and why parliament has to support the regional coalition.
This was the topic that him and the retreat organizers agreed upon as his lecture; and after he shared with them his brief notice on the matter as he continued preparing himself.
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However, to his shock, he was not contacted again even though his party has a political cooperation agreement with the NRM in which they agreed to work together.
Mbidde insists that the invitation that his party president Norbert Mao received was not in his capacity as DP president but as a minister of Justice and Constitutional Affairs.
Ono Bwino has learnt that the facilitators in the just concluded retreat were paid between Shs10-20m on top of getting an opportunity to interact with the NRM national chairperson who is also the president.
So giving a lecture at this retreat was a golden opportunity for Mbidde to seal his political dream of being appointed a minister in Museveni’s next government or be deployed in a juicy government agency.
Sources said that in 2022, after signing the cooperation agreement, Mbidde was very sure that he was going to get a government job because of the good relationship he had with some government decision makers but he missed out.
Mao later pleaded with him to be patient because Museveni was preparing something big for him.
But years passed without him getting that big thing apart from receiving instructions to represent Museveni’s son who also doubles as the Chief of Defence Forces (CDF) in several courts of law.
Sources divulged that because of Mao’s gymnastics, it is the reason why Mbidde decided to join Speaker Annet Anita Among’s team which is mobilizing support for her to retain her seat as the next speaker of parliament abandoning his longtime friend Mao who also declared interest to contest against Among.
Fred Mwesigwa, one of the personal assistants to Mao confirmed that there is an ongoing sharp misunderstanding between Mbidde, Gerald Siranda the DP Secretary General and Mao.
He says both Mbidde and Siranda betrayed Mao who stood by them for a long time. He cited greed for money as the main cause for their defection to Among’s camp because she has a lot of it.
Recently, Mbidde has been cited at Speaker Among’s Nakasero posh home attending private and public gatherings with her.
However, Mbidde blasted Mao’s henchmen and women on their man attending the Kyankwanzi retreat boasting that based on his political experience, Mao going to Kyankwanzi will not change the decision of the NRM Central Executive Committee (CEC) which endorsed Among and her deputy Thomas Tayebwa as parliament’s next top parliament.
But when he was addressing the retreat attendees, Museveni said that CEC’s decision can be revised.
In his response to Mbidde’s allegation that he was invited to Kyankwanzi as any other minister in Museveni’s government not as a DP president, Mao stated that he was invited to the NRM retreat at Kyankwanzi as a DP president and also as a special visitor to NRM national chairperson Museveni which made him a special person in the retreat.
Highly placed State House sources told Ono Bwino that sidelining Mbidde on attending the retreat was intentional.
It was a tactical political move to prove to him that speaker Among is does not influence or make decisions on some matters in this country as he has been telling his friends.
