Otunnu: Independence Celebrations Were a Dramatic NRM Jamboree

SOURCE: THE DAILY MONITOR, 12 OCTOBER 2012

http://www.monitor.co.ug/News/National/Otunnu++Independence+celebrations+were+NRM+jamboree/-/688334/1530664/-/ebpo4rz/-/index.html

Kampala

Mr Olara Otunnu, the President of the opposition Uganda People’s Congress party has described the Golden Jubilee Independence celebrations that were held at Kololo  on Tuesday as a dramatic jamboree for the ruling National Resistance Movement.

Speaking at the fourth Milton Obote Memorial Lecture in Kampala on Wednesday, Mr Otunnu defended the party’s stand not to celebrate Uganda’s 50 years of independence.

“” A jubilee is not about the chronological counting of time. It is about identifying and celebrating seminal achievements and progress over a certain period of time,” Mr Otunnu said.

He argued that the reason why UPC, the party that led Uganda to independence in 1962, was not at Kololo Independence Grounds is because of the state of the nation and the condition of citizens which is not worth celebrating.

He said the progress that was put in place within the first decade of Uganda’s Independence under the late President Apollo Milton Obote, today lies in ruins.

“The public education system cannot produce world class professionals as it were before and organised trade unions set up by Obote no longer exist,” he said.

The late Milton Obote became the country's first Prime Minister and was given the instruments of power from Prince Edward, the Duke of Kent, who represented Queen Elizabeth in 1962.

Mr Otunnu cited the health service infrastructure that was put in place by the first UPC government which he said has disappeared.

Mr Otunnu who served as the UN Under-Secretary General and Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict from 1998 to 2005, said what is happening in Uganda is not corruption but the “wholesale plunder of both public and natural resources of the country”.

He wondered how the NRM regime can claim that Uganda is under a multi-party dispensation yet political parties cannot freely organise rallies.

Ahead of independence celebrations, the government and police stopped all political parties from holding any rallies until the festivities were done.

“We were not in Kololo because of the impunity that reigns and terror unleashed by the state on innocent civilians,” he said.

However, Oyam South MP Betty Amongi, a UPC party member disagreed with Mr Otunnu on why the organisation was not represented at Kololo.

Ms  Amongi, who attended the celebrations questioned if  9th of October was an NRM day or a day for all Ugandans to celebrate.