Opposition’s plan leaked, so we tried to negotiate with NRM during the speakership race- Ekanya (Video)
Opposition Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) Party’s Godfrey Ekanya has revealed that while they had a plan to challenge the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) party in the Parliament speakership race, the plan was leaked before the elections.
According to Ekanya who is also the Tororo North County Member of Parliament on the FDC ticket, the opposition had planned to sacrifice legislator Ibrahim Ssemujju Nganda and proceed with NRM’s Kadaga then later push for FDC’s Yusufu Nsibambi, but all the plan fell apart.
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“Our strategy was to have Kadaga and then have a deputy speaker as Nsibambi, but NUP also wanted to present a candidate who was withdrawn close to the nomination,” Ekanya claimed.
Nile Post understands that the National Unity Platform (NUP) had suggested to front Kampala woman MP Shamim Malende but close to nominations, they jumped ship and joined the Kadaga bandwagon.
Kadaga lost the election to NRM’s Jacob Oulanyah who obtained 310 votes.
Ekanya claims that when the speakership race was gone, they regrouped to have the Deputy Speaker position.
“Here we realized that Nsibambi had a religious relationship with Nsereko so we wanted him to step down, but we failed. Therefore, we opted that the only way out was to negotiate with the NRM them we would have a win-win situation,” Ekanya opined.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLhMg9VGsxg
Kilak South Member of Parliament, Gilbert Olanya blamed the opposition failure on the lack of unity in the House.
"It is true we of Opposition did not speak with one voice, maybe because we are quite a few. When you are few, your impact is not great at all, even if all of us voted Ssemujju, we would not make it," Olanya claimed.
According to Ssemujju, members of the opposition must account for their absence when it mattered.
"If all the 119 voted for Nsibambi, then I would say they do not like me, but still he got a few votes, which brings us to the fact that we ought to account to the public," Ssemujju said.
