By Carolyne Nakazibwe
Jan 16, 2004
|
KAMPALA � Veteran politician Bidandi Ssali is opposed to government�s plan to hold a referendum on the return to multipartyism and the scrapping of presidential term limits. �The easiest thing a politician can do is to manipulate a population through a referendum. What matters are the repercussions after the referendum,� Bidandi said during a morning talk show on Impact FM yesterday. �Let government just talk with the opposition as planned. That is breaking the ice,� he added. Bidandi is a senior member of the Movement, and was a key figure behind turning the Movement into a political party called the National Resistance Movement Organisation. He said during the show that Uganda does not need to incur the costs of a referendum to change the Constitution to remove the presidential term limits. �My quarrel is not Museveni�s coming back in 2006 or not. My quarrel is how does he come back? I am against changing the Constitution and I will continue opposing it,� Bidandi said. He said there is no reason to show that the constitutional article limiting the presidential terms to two, each being five years, is bad. �These are people who don�t know where they will be if Museveni leaves,� Bidandi said of those politicians hankering to remove term limits. He expressed dismay that some Cabinet ministers were behind the �Return Museveni� campaign when �you have many things to accomplish in your ministry. �It is no different from the �Force Obote Back� campaign we had before. Obote was twice deposed by the military. He is now in exile in Zambia. �We have been called undisciplined, but we are all still in the NRM. No one can fire us from there and like human beings we shall always have our misunderstandings,� he said. |
� 2004 The Monitor Publications
STOP MORE SPAM with the new MSN 8 and get 2 months FREE* -------------------------------------------- This service is hosted on the Infocom network http://www.infocom.co.ug
