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When the the so called NRM "revolution" begins to devour it's own .!!! MK Brig. Kashaka explains his pleas to Tumukunde | ||||
| GRACE MATSIKO & SOLOMON MUYITA | ||||
KAMPALA The former chief of personnel and administration in the army, Brig. Steven Kashaka, was cleared by military authorities before he undertook the mission to persuade the detained Brig. Henry Tumukunde to make amends with President Yoweri Museveni and gain freedom. But Kashaka hastily clarifies that the plea was his own initiative, not the army's.
Kashaka, until recently Uganda's military attaché to the East African Community headquarters in Arusha, pleaded for about 30 minutes with Tumukunde at the General Court Martial in Makindye to apologise to the commander-in-chief and gain his freedom. "You rather soften, calm down and gain your freedom instead of staying like this in prison," Kashaka said in the hearing of journalists and others at the court. Tumukunde calmly rebuffed his fellow brigadier's entreaties saying he cannot apologise because he had wronged no one. The brigadier said he has been holding meetings with the detained Tumukunde after getting clearance "from the relevant offices" he declined to name. Military spokesman Shaban Bantariza, however, said that no one needs clearance from the army leadership to visit Tumukunde. "Like any other [person] in confinement, there is a time for visitors and indeed people do visit the brigadier," he said. "I have been telling him to stop the mistakes he is making," Kashaka said on Friday. "He should not have challenged the state. We are both senior officers, I feel it is my duty to advise him." Kashaka showed up at the Court Martial on Thursday morning shortly after Tumukunde. Both officers are charged with putting names of non-existent (ghost) soldiers on the payroll of the military and pocketing the money meant for them thereby allegedly leading the government to lose hundreds of millions of shillings. Kashaka, like Tumukunde, was at the court for the mention of his ghost-soldier case. On May 28 this year, Museveni ordered him to resign his seat as one of the 10 army MPs and then had him arrested after he went on radio to criticise the President both as a politician and as the commander-in-chief. He was quickly charged with "spreading harmful propaganda" and insubordination because the military code does not allow serving soldiers to talk politics. The new charge is in addition to the ghost-soldier one. On August 25, Tumukunde lost a petition in the Constitutional Court in which he had challenged Museveni's power to force him out of Parliament. The Court Martial equally threw out his bail application. Tumukunde is currently also battling it out in the High Court challenging the competence of the military court and the impartiality of its chairman, Lt. Gen. Elly Tumwine, to try him over the "harmful propaganda" charges. |
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