Justice and Constitutional Affairs minister Kahinda Otafiire has warned the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) faces collapse should it expel its members who are contesting as independents in the 2016 general election.
Maj Gen Otafiire also said he is not afraid of expulsion from the ruling party, insisting that he will contest his Ruhinda South Constituency parliamentary seat as an independent, defying party orders that he would be expelled.
The minister said it is wrong for the NRM, which insists it will expel such members, to assume it is right and a half of its members as being in the wrong.
Gen Otafiire claimed many party members, who had been rigged out of the party primaries, wanted the party to listen to their cases but it ignored them.
“If NRM decides to expel those who will go as independents, there will be something wrong with the party. It will be no party,” he said yesterday at a press conference in Kampala.
“To insist that you are right and they are wrong is to go the UPC [Uganda Peoples Congress] way and you know where UPC went; it disintegrated.”
The minister’s remarks came against the backdrop of insistence by the NRM Secretariat that its members who lost in the October/November party primaries shouldn’t run in 2016.
Gen Otafiire lost the October 27 NRM primaries to Capt Donozio Mugabe Kahonda, a retired soldier, who polled 21,467 votes against the minister’s 12,949 votes, defeating the minister in all the sub-counties – a feat he pulled off while he was incarcerated on charges of forgery.
Gen Otafiire insists his opponent does not have the requisite academic qualifications but the retired UPDF captain has been nominated both by the ruling party and the Electoral Commission to run for Parliament.
Gen Otafiire also said he is not afraid of being expelled from the NRM, saying in any case he was an UPC member.
He also said the presidential advisor on media, Mr Tamale Murundi, who the Uganda Commissions Commission has banned from speaking on broadcast media, has a constitutional right to speak.
“Let him speak. It is his constitutional right. If you are not happy with what they have said, go to court.”
