Wadri’s Arua win

The mistakes of FDC, NRM

Kampala, Uganda | FLAVIA NASSAKA | Arua Municipality MP Kasiano Wadri appeared assured of victory from the start.

“I have already won this election,” he told The Independent a week into the official threeweeks of campaigning, “I will just need to do a little panel beating in these coming days.”

But that appeared in doubt when the army and police deployed heavily in the municipality; which is usually a sign that President Museveni’s ruling NRM party is determined to win. Wadri, who was riding around with Bobi Wine’s ready army had been attracting huge crowds. But when the President entered Arua on Aug. 13 to campaign for the NRM candidate; former Youth and EALA MP Nusrah Tiperu, he attracted equally huge crowds.

Still, the Police Deputy Spokesperson, Patrick Onyango assured journalists that day that the campaign was going smoothly without major incident.

All 12 candidates, except NRM’s Tiperu, had on Aug. 11 even participated in an unprecedented joint candidates’ debate at Heritage Courts Hotel. Hosted by civil society organisations under the Arua District NGO Network (ADINGON), the debate was the first of its kind in the country.

In any case, Onyango said, the police had even deployed a standby Public Order Management Force, to intervene if required.

Onyango would be proved wrong. But nobody could foretell that because the Arua by-election was being billed as the most peaceful. By the evening of Aug.13; the last day of campaigns the peace bubble had burst and the Special Forces Command (SFC) which guards Museveni was running riot, shooting, kicking, and beating up civilians, ransacking buildings, and arresting many.  Wadri was arrested on allegations that his supporters had attacked President Museveni’s motorcade leading to the mayhem.

By the time the polls opened on the morning of Aug. 15, Wadri’s whereabouts remained unclear. While Wadri was assured of the vote before this, his team appeared shaken by the event.

His campaign mobiliser, the former MP Christine Abia called a meeting that morning to break the bad news and more. They had not only lost a candidate but computers and money – up to Shs85 million which had been reserved to facilitate Wadri’s polling agents. Their campaign manager, Nuru Butelezi, was also missing together with many members of Wadri’s campaign task force.

Then she moved to rally the team. Wadri’s fate, she said, was a challenge to them. Now, more than before, they had to deliver a win by their candidate.

“This should energise us to fight on,” she said.

By evening when wadri was announced winner, a little before 10pm on Aug.15, his whereabouts were still unclear. He garnered 6,528 votes – 38% of the vote whereas his close challenger Nusrah Tiperu of the ruling NRM party got 4,763 votes. Bruce Mudhafir Musema, who had been seconded by FDC, came forth with a paltry 1,372 votes and Independent candidate Robert Ejuku garnered 2,703 votes.

Wadri was on Aug.16 arraigned in the Magistrates court in Gulu town, 250kms away from his constituency.

Charged with him were MPs Paul Mwiru of (Jinja East), Gerald Karuhanga of (Ntungamo Municipality), Francis Zaake  (Mityana),  Kyagulanyi Sentamu aka Bobi Wine (Kyaddondo East)and former MP Mike Mabikke.  These opposition stalwarts who have branded themselves as the so-called `People Power Group’ were dragged out of their rooms at Hotel Pacific on Adumi Road in Arua. Bobi Wine’s driver, Yasin Kawuma, was not so lucky. He was shot dead.

Nesma Ocukuru; the LC III chairperson Arua Hill division in the Municipality who chaired Wadri’s campaign taskforce told The Independent that Wadri won because of proper planning of the campaign. She said they had mapped out all the challenges their candidate could possibly face and how to overcome them.

She said while the NRM was counting on the sympathy vote – since the by-election was called because an NRM MP, Ibrahim Abiriga had been assassinated in Kampala, Wadri’s camp had calculated that “voters of Arua Municipality are not a type that gives a sympathy vote”.

“The idea of sentiment because of the assassination of MP Ibrahim Abiriga was ruled out,” she said.

She said although Wadri had been denied chance to compete in the FDC primaries, they knew which areas to focus on, including how to mobilise voters.

She said Wadri entered the race with two handicaps; Wadri’s tribe was not the biggest in the municipality and he was not Muslim. Tribe and religion, according to people knowledgeable about Arua politics, often determine the winner.

In fact, Hajji Abdul Hakim Moli, the area FDC Electoral Commission chairman, had told The Independent in an interview before elections that their candidate, Bruce Musema was assured of victory because he belonged to the biggest tribe; the Aringa and was Muslim.

But Wadri’s team made a decisive calculation. Although the Aringa tribe was biggest, its vote was divided between three prominent candidates; NRM’s Nusura Tiperu, FDC’s Bruce Musema, and Ejuku; an independent. If Wadri could rally his Terego kinsmen and women, who are the second biggest tribe, he could win. So Wadri immediately started courting the Terego. Wadri, who has been in elective politics since 2001 and won the Terego County parliament seat three times until 2016, was also counting on his experience. Ocukuru said they knew that the other candidates were amateurs who depended on big guns from Kampala.

“We then said let’s do the sensitisation part. Let’s not mention names. Let’s come up with a good manifesto after all the rest in the race were amateurs,” Ocukuru said, “By the time the big guns arrived from Kampala, we had already laid a foundation that only needed final touches.”

And when the NRM and FDC big guns arrived, they seemed to take the same direction as the local politicians and candidates – something that worked for Wadri.

President Museveni spent half of the time at the last NRM rally at Boma Grounds cautioning the people of Arua not to blunder and vote Wadri. He said Wadri is not his friend and, therefore, could not reach him to negotiate for a piece of the national cake for Arua. He said with Wadri, the area problems of unemployment and lack of electricity and health services would never be fixed.

At the last rally for FDC candidate Musema at Arua Primary school, FDC party President Patrick Oboi Amuriat said Wadri is “selfish” for choosing to stand against his party’s flag bearer, old, and a non- performer who delivered no results as a representative of Terego in parliament. Perhaps unknown to Amuriat, he was speaking in Wadri country as Arua Primary school is less than a kilometer away from Wadri’s at Prison Cell both in Oli division.

When Wadri spoke there, he spoke about their pain which he knew first hand. He said, for example, it was wrong to blame him for the untarmacked roads when Adjumani Road; the highway to the home of the West Nile region’s  most prominent politician and NRM honcho, First Deputy Prime Minister Moses Ali, remained untarmacked.

Prof. Morris Ogenga Latigo says those that were focusing on mudslinging Wadri forgot that he is an experienced politician.

Apart from that, Wadri had made a smart choice to embrace Bobi Wine.  Recently, analysts consider Bobi wine a major ingredient to winning an election having helped Asuman Basalirwa of the little known JEEMA party trounce NRM and FDC in the newly Bugiri municipality and helping Mwiru is Jinja East.

Latigo was attending the Pan- African Parliament in South Africa when his colleagues were campaigning in Arua. He said he was closely following the last bits of the rally mostly on social media and what immediately came to his mind was that his party, the FDC needed urgent introspection.

He said the party needed to realise the blunder they made when they chose not to embrace Wadri as the most competent candidate and chose to go into sentiments that the other candidate had spent money in courts and had stood in previous elections.

“Politics is war not for sentiments. You have to put the most competent person to command. ” He said, “Now the party came Forth. Those in the tendency have learnt something. .  “You have to send the best troop to win the battle”.

For him, Wadri would still have won the Terego seat in 2016 if the NRM did not take advantage of the poverty in the constituency to give people hoes in exchange for votes. Arua being an urban constituency, the same bait could not work as people are quite enlightened and have a reason as to why they should vote for a particular candidate and not the other.

Ocukuru agrees and says it is the reason why Wadri’s agents did not abandon their posts even when they were told there was no money to fund them. The money had been brought by MPs from Kampala to cater for agents’ lunch and transport refunds.

“They still came and others deployed themselves voluntarily,” she said, “At every polling station, we had not less than 50 people guarding the vote until counting. That is how we managed to eliminate any possibilities of rigging.”

However, out of the 46,000 registered voters, only 16,000 turned out to vote. This is only 34% of the electorate. And, to Latigo those are the courageous ones who amidst intimidation of army and police deployment. They went out to vote to make a statement.