Stop questioning why we are not joining Besigye protest: LOP

Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | The Leader of Opposition in Parliament-LOP Mathias Mpuuga has asked Ugandans to stop questioning why the National Unity Platform-NUP leadership has not joined Rtd. Dr. Col. Kiiza Besigye, the former Forum for Democratic Change-FDC party president in the protests against the skyrocketing commodity prices.

According to Mpuuga, NUP leaders made their recommendations in Parliament on how the skyrocketing commodity prices challenges can be resolved by the government but nothing has been done.

“We issued the statement in Parliament on behalf of our party relating to the running away of prices on essential goods. But the regime hasn’t considered anything. We asked them to cut on high taxes and to turn down their appetite for expenditure, but nothing has been considered,” Mpuuga told journalists at the NUP offices in Kamwokya on Tuesday.

He said the government has left Ugandans to suffer, which should have compelled all Ugandans to rise up against the bad governance and stop questioning what opposition leaders are doing.

Jolly Mugisha, the NUP vice president for Western Uganda appealed to some Ugandans to stop saying that things are okay in western Uganda since the President comes from that part of the country.

“You know what is ironic in Uganda, most people think that everything is okay in western Uganda because the dictator comes from that side. I want to categorically say this, things are worse even in western Uganda. We’re dying alive,” Mugisha said.

She said people in western Uganda are not happy with the government’s decision to construct roads in Congo and build schools in Tanzania, yet schools and roads in western Uganda are in a sorry state.

Speaking about the just concluded Omoro parliamentary by-elections, Mpuuga said the exercise was marred by violence, voter bribery, and the highest levels of criminality, orchestrated by the NRM regime.

“Omoro is a crime scene for the criminality that took place there. The young man who purportedly claims to have won is also a witness to that crime. Bribery, torture, brutalization of citizens, arrests, and results that were declared by a militia group was a sign of how bad we have gone as a country,” Mpuuga stated.

David Lewis Rubongoya, the NUP general secretary said despite all the evidence of vote-rigging that marred Omoro by-election ,they won’t go to courts.

The electoral commission declared the National Resistance Movement-NRM party candidate, Andrew Ojok Oulanyah the winner of the Omoro County Parliamentary by-election with 14,224 votes defeating his closest National Unity Platform-NUP rival Simon Toolit Akecha who got 633 votes in the May 27th, 2022 polls.

The seat fell vacant following the death of the former area legislator and speaker of parliament Jacob Oulanyah.

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