Clear Path For Haruna Kasolo As Tycoon Karangwa’s CEC Petition Collapses

Defeated NRM tycoon Moses Karangwa had failed or refused to move on after losing the Buganda CEC race to Minister Haruna Kasolo. And his refusal to concede defeat was causing chaos inside NRM including the recent violence that saw diehard Kasolo supporter Full Figure Nakangubi publicly flogged and tortured at the ruling party’s offices along Nakasero’s Kyadondo Road.

She had been tricked through a phone call that required her to come for a meeting at Tanga Odoi’s office as part of efforts to resolve the Kasolo-Karangwa election dispute. Images of a bruised Full Figure emerged on the internet and this sparked off a very damaging debate for the ruling party’s image.

An accusing finger had been directed at Justine Namere, Karangwa’s campaign spokesperson, against whom Nakangubi filed an aggravated robbery case at CPS Kampala. She claims she was battered by Namere and her husband a one Nsubuga who in the process allegedly stole her phone and Shs500,000/=.

In fact, Namere is still expected to appear at CPS and defend herself against assassination attempt claims. There is too much pressure to have Namere apprehended, with President’s Office Secretary Hajji Yunus Kakande encouraging Police to do their work without fear or favour.

NRM primary election losers looked forward to leveraging on that feuding to remain in the race in the hope that a disgruntled loser like Karangwa would fund them against Kasolo-backed flag bearers in order to perpetuate proxy wars inside the ruling party. The feuding even attracted the attention of the President as Karangwa resorted to ranting against his senior cadres like Kiwanuka Kiryowa.

But gratefully, sanity finally prevailed on Saturday evening when Karangwa abandoned the anti-Kasolo petition he had filed with the NRM election appeals tribunal. Karangwa, flanked by diehard supporters mainly from West Nile and not from Buganda region which he wanted to lead as Vice Chairman, addressed reporters at Kyadondo and indicated he had come to the end of the road. He seemed to be still hurting but, having omitted to submit compelling evidence, he had no option but to abandon his claim against Kasolo.

Flanked by his lawyer Mukasa Mbidde of DP, a triumphant Haruna Kasolo commended Karangwa for letting bye-gones to be bye-gones so that all the efforts can now go into mobilization to deliver Buganda-wide wins for Museveni and other NRM candidates against the opposition in Kabaka’s territory which in 2021 was snatched by NUP. Kasolo celebrated Karangwa’s abandonment of the petition to be an endorsement for his leadership, which naturally re-energizes him to work even harder, delivering wins for the NRM.

He also rebuked party leaders from West Nile demanding that they should stop inciting Karangwa in service of their opportunistic agendas. “They come from regions which have Vice Chairpersons elected by all of us at Kololo yet they want to disorganize Buganda. How can you come from West Nile and want to be the one to determine who becomes Vice Chairperson for the NRM in Buganda?”

Calling this unwarranted interference and provocation, Kasolo asserted that the conduct of some of the few delegates from West Nile explains the urgency for reforms to be effected on the NRM Constitution so that regional Vice Chairpersons are exclusively elected or voted by party leaders from that particular region.

Kasolo thinks that the currently arrangement, which requires the regional Chairpersons to be elected by all party delegates from the whole country, can lead to undesirable outcomes as delegates from elsewhere can maliciously gang up and impose on the party someone who may not be popular in that very region he or she is seeking to lead.

This demand has repeatedly been made by several other party leaders and cadres from other parts of the country. Some are saying that being required to campaign in the whole country yet one is seeking to lead a region, makes CEC races unnecessarily very expensive and exhaustive for nothing. On his part, lawyer Mbidde commended Karangwa for the prudent decision “because there is no way he was to going get anything out of this because he had no evidence and his petition was incurably defective from the word go.”