By Elite Intelligence Unit
Bobi Wine, real name Robert Kyagulanyi, recently took over the leadership of the National Unity Platform (NUP) party as president.
The party was previously headed by Moses Nkonge Kibalama, who said this was a merger between NUP and People Power at the party’s delegate’s conference on 14th July.
However, a few days after Bobi Wine unveiling the NUP, several Members of Parliament that belonged to President Yoweri Museveni’s National Resistance Movement (NRM) have since abandoned their party and joined NUP.
These were unveiled at the NUP party headquarters in Kamwokya and they include: John Baptist Nambeshe (NRM, Manjiya County), Patrick Nsamba Oshabe (NRM, Kassanda County) and David Kalwanga (NRM, Busujju County). Other legislators that joined Bobi Wine’s NUP include; Latif Ssebaggala (Independent, Kawempe North), and Francis Zaake (Independent, Mityana Municipality).
According to Bobi Wine, when they started the People Power Movement about three years ago, they had lengthy discussions about whether or not to register it as a political party. Their analysis led them to the conclusion that it was both untimely and impractical to form a political party. In any case, they were alive to the fact that the regime would foil any attempt to register the movement as a political party.
Bobi Wine further noted that right from 2018, their message has always been ‘Mission 2021’ but for weeks and months, there has been one question from their supporters; ‘What symbol shall we use in the election?’
“A few weeks back when we announced the call for expression of interest, over 10,000 people responded so that they run under our platform. Every day, we have been receiving countless calls about one thing- what is the symbol? Expectedly, all our people would want to have a uniform symbol for liberation. They know that if they go into this election as independents, the regime will ensure that the symbol which I have is not available to any other of our candidates. Therefore we must act, and act now. And today, I am very happy to announce the answer to this question,” Bobi Wine said.
He added that; “Having realised that the People Power Movement itself would never be registered by the Museveni regime, it became very urgent and expedient to find a solution. And so, a few months back, when we predicted that we would find ourselves in this situation, we embarked on finding a solution. We set out to silently identify a Platform which we would use to answer this question.
Although many political parties and organisations had reached out to us, our first and most important criteria was to look out for a formation which shares our values, aims and objectives. And there are many which do, but there was a political organisation whose message and objectives rhymed well with those very close to us.
In order to make the message even stronger, in July 2019, we went ahead and successfully changed the name of this political organisation from National Unity, Reconciliation and Development Party to the National Unity Platform. Therefore, today I stand here to announce to the nation that we are unveiling the National Unity Platform as the political wing of the People Power Movement. The National Unity Platform is a political organisation duly registered with the Electoral Commission and our symbol is an umbrella.”
The presidential hopeful also disclosed that in the coming days, they shall embark on a process of formalising the People Power Alliance to cater for their comrades and political leaders who belong to other registered political organisations.