Did Mao Con Museveni?

By Isaac Mutema

Democratic Party (DP) president turned ruling NRM cabinet minister, Norbert Mao, is on record committing in writing to influence the party MPs to back the government positions on the floor of parliament.

That commitment forms part of the cooperation agreement which Mao and Museveni signed to signal the inauguration of the political marriage between them.

Mao himself has since fortunately confirmed having consciously authored that commitment and that he did so in black and white.

But shortly after getting wind of the arrangement, the DP lawmakers unanimously dismissed the same. They assert that Mao never consulted them at all before going on to commit them to support the ruling party policies.

By the way, the lawmakers are even threatening to fire Mao as the president of DP for joining the ruling NRM party at the same time he is holding the leadership of their party.

They have since collected the majority of the signatures required to move a vote of no confidence against Mao.

ALSO READ: SIGNED & SEALED: Democratic Party’s Norbert Mao & National Resistance Movement’s Museveni Finally Agree To Work Together

Mao comes off as confusing whilst explaining if he indeed consulted the party lawmakers before committing them to cooperation with the NRM.

Although he claims that the top party organs sat in Esella Hotel in Kira and cleared the move, he again adds that he is going to make time and fully explain to the discontented lawmakers and other DP leaders why he chose to work with the government.

This would immediately beg the question as to which is which between the party organs having sanctioned the deal and the fact that Mao is set to talk to the leaders of DP about why he committed them to work with Museveni’s government!

Mao has been telling all and sundry and the DP lawmakers, for that matter, that he would never join the government of President Museveni.

Challenged one time in the past by Butambaala MP Muwanga Kivumbi to address himself to claims that he is a mole in DP working for the president, Mao seriously hit the roof.

Whilst accusing Muwanga of defaming him, Mao vowed to drag the Buganda caucus parliament chairman to the courts of law.

He would later eat up his threats by humorously claiming how he had chickened out of the move upon realizing that there’s no case anywhere in the law books to do with stupidity.

ALSO READ: ‘DP Without Museveni Is Not A Serious Group’, NRM’s Museveni Ridicules Norbert Mao

At another time, a riled Mao threatened to invoke the spirits of Labongo and Gipiri to punish Muwanga for ‘falsely’ insisting that he was truly yellow at heart and deceptively green on the outside.

Yet, on another occasion, Mao referred to Betty Nambooze Mukisa Bakireke as a watermelon. He coined such characterization of Nambooze after the Mukono municipality MP walked out of DP for the National Unity Platform (NUP).

By using the watermelon, Mao was implying that much as Nambooze had claimed to belong to DP all along, she was in truth kind of a watermelon which is green on the outside and red inside.

Red is the official colour for NUP while green is the official colour for DP which reveals what Mao was trying to figuratively imply.

Nambooze herself had kicked off the salvo by figuratively referring to Mao as a pumpkin. The bedridden lawmaker was using the pumpkin to figuratively imply that while Mao is green on the outside he is yellow inside.

Yellow is the colour for the NRM which tells what Nambooze was trying to impute, albeit, figuratively.

The domino effect of the exchanges I have been highlighting is that Mao has never consulted the leaders of DP about whether to join the NRM or not.

ALSO READ: Museveni Appoints Norbert Mao Minister Of Justice & Constitutional Affairs

If he did and the leaders cleared him, why then has Mao been ever rejecting any assertion from the same leaders that he was a mole for the President in DP and that it was only a matter of time before he could join him?

Put the other way round, if the leaders of DP indeed endorsed the deal and knew about it, why have they again been accusing him of working secretly with the President and disowned him upon going to NRM?

Before I can forget, each time Mao has been attacked as Museveni’s mole, he has always returned the fire by instead accusing either Bobi Wine or Dr Kizza Besigye of being the mole not him.

If his party endorsed the deal for him to join the President, why has Mao again been denying working with the President and instead faulting Bobi and Besigye as the ones secretly working with the President!

That Mao being a lawyer and a good one at that, is not flashing any document to pin down the DP lawmakers about having endorsed the deal which he finally entered with the President, tells a lot regarding who is telling the truth.

Mao isn’t the kind of person to keep quiet while being accused left, right and centre. Hope you can bear me witness to this.

ALSO READ: Democratic Party MPs Distance Themselves From Museveni – Mao Deal

Fortunately, Mao has been telling everyone how he is going to keep his silence and instead find time in future to brief his colleagues in DP on why he took the party to the NRM.

Let me tell you, Mao is stuck having encountered a hostile party leadership which he thought was going to support the government policies as he committed before the President.

Subsequently, he is holding fire to avoid angering the leaders of DP in the hope that they are finally going to find it in their hearts to forgive him and help him respect the agreement he entered with the President

Many people have said it and I am inclined to believe it. They say Mao is broke because DP is also broke. He isn’t in power to earn.

They share that Mao needs specialized treatment. I don’t know, honestly, what Mao is suffering from.

But even then, I know about how one time Mao got stuck in Gulu without money for treatment and the President sent him a chopper on the way to Nairobi for treatment.

After what I have written above, one wouldn’t be far off the mark if one said that Mao has been financially stuck yet with bills to pick and so that has been the motivation for him to join the guys with the deep pockets in the NRM.

What do you think dear readers? We love and anxiously wait to hear from you. Kindly, drop your thought. Thank you.