Buyaga West MP, Barnabas Tinkasimire, has come out to empasize that he is still a member of ruling political party, National Resistance Movement, NRM, despite having close ties with the opposition pressure group, People Power.
Tinkasimire who is also the ‘People Power’ coordinator in Bunyoro region made the remarks Monday morning on NBS Television while responding to a meeting he and some other NRM ‘rebel’ MPs held with President Yoweri Museveni last week.
The legislators have for a long time opposed several party positions including scrapping-off of presidential age caps from the constitution. Some of them are on record for having serverally called on President Museveni not to stand again in next year’s general elections and give way to ‘People Power’ leader, Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu.
The President on Friday said the MPs “called on me at State House Entebbe to seek the party’s forgiveness.”
But the meeting has ignited public debate as many Ugandans continue to question why the lawmakers would seek apology for speaking their mind especially on the removal of age limits where they even had to consult.
However, Tinkasimire on Friday told this reporter that non of them apologised to the President but instead discussed how to better their party.
“What took us in the meeting was issues to do with the party not President Museveni. It is not true that we went to apologise to him. The meeting was long, can he tell you who apologised. We discussed other issues which have nothing to do with apology,” said Tinkasimire.
He echoed the same during the TV show this morning saying that the focus of their meeting was on party ideology.
“You can not reduce the meeting that took more than three hours to just an apology. We mainly discussed issues to do with the party ideology. We discussed our four ideologies of patriotism, Pan-Africanism, democracy, and social transformation,” explained Tinkasimire.
He says that change can not only be sought when one is out of the ruling political party and this according to him, is why he is still in NRM and ready to stand with it in all conditions.
“I have always been in the NRM, and I will stand with NRM. Even when I was wearing the red beret, I was in the NRM. I was calling for change. We have used all civil methods, and we are still engaging. That is why we held the meeting with the president. The unfortunate thing is that the public thinks if we want change, we must leave NRM. We can still seek for change within the NRM,” said the legislator.
He said while meeting the President, they unanimously agreed with that it is their responsibility to transform our country.
He said: We must transform this country. What is killing our people is that they can’t survive.”
Tinkasimire is among the NRM MPs who attacked the party’s Central Executive Committee (CEC) for taking a decision to maintain President Yoweri Museveni as the party’s presidential sole candidate for the 2021 general elections.
The lawmakers last year condemned the President for allegedly manipulating CEC and conniving with them to come up with the resolution. They said the resolution is selfish and misguided and that also in violation of Article 71 of the constitution that mandates political parties to organize internal elections based on democratic principles.
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