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JINJA � Forum for Democratic Change leader Mugisha Muntu has said that he quit the Movement after President Museveni failed to implement a key recommendation of the Kyankwanzi meeting of March 2003 on presidential term limits.
Mr Muntu told a rally in Jinja on Friday that the Movement's National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting in Kyankwanzi from March 31-April 2, 2003, recommended that the President appoints a committee to examine the proposal to have presidential term limits removed from the Constitution and report to the National Conference of the Movement but the committee was never named.
"That was the point of departure. That is when I realised that we couldn't have any more internal debates about democracy," Muntu, the FDC co-ordinator for organisation and mobilisation, said.
Muntu together with FDC officials Harry Kasigwa, Ogenga Latigo and Salaamu Musumba addressed three rallies in Jinja and Kamuli districts on Friday afternoon.
At all the rallies, Muntu said that the President's decision to ignore the Kyankwanzi recommendation made him realise that the Movement no longer had room for dissent.
However, Mr Ofwono Opondo, the Movement Secretariat's director of information, said that the Kyankwanzi resolution was subject to ratification by the National Conference.
He said that Mr Museveni, the Movement chairman, in fact named, among others, Dr Khiddu Makubuya, Dr Crispus Kiyonga, and Prof. Semakula Kiwanuka to the committee. But at the same time he said he would have to consult other people during the National Conference meeting before unveiling the entire membership of the committee.
The National Conference, the Movement's top organ, met on April 3-5 at the International Conference Centre in Kampala to look at the NEC resolutions and recommendations.
That meeting, Opondo said, rejected the idea of the committee to look into the term limits issue. Instead, the National Conference passed a second resolution to form the NRM organisation and seek the lifting of presidential term limits.
Muntu said he was further surprised when districts such as Kampala and Ntungamo, which had opposed the term limits proposal at the Kyankwanzi meeting, suddenly changed their stand at the Conference Centre.
Muntu accused Museveni of being deceptive, saying that he is using other people to help him renege on his 2001 campaign promise to serve only one more term.
The Movement proposal to amend the Constitution to allow a President rule for as long as he or she is electable has fuelled talk that this is a ploy to have Museveni run for another term - the third term - when his current and last one expires next year.
Muntu, a retired major general former army commander, wondered why the President is scared of declaring his stand on the third term yet in 1980, at a time when his security could not be guaranteed, he was bold enough to declare that he would wage war if that year's elections were rigged.
At the same rallies, FDC vice chairwoman in charge of eastern Uganda, Ms Musumba, said that the party is looking for a candidate from the Busoga sub-region to lead it in the 2006 presidential elections.
"I have been assigned to look around Busoga for a suitable candidate to lead [FDC] in the 2006 presidential elections. Give me a name. The next President should be from here," she said.
A candidate from the region, she said, would be able to help the party swing about 1 million votes in its favour. At well more than 2 million, Basoga are the third most populous ethnic group in Uganda. | 
