----- Original Message ----- 
From: gook makanga 
To: [log in to unmask] 
Sent: Thursday, January 15, 2004 10:04 PM
Subject: Bidandi says no to referendum


Bidandi says no to referendum
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.
      Ugandans may have to hold a Shs 29 billion referendum to decide whether the term limits should be lifted.

      "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 said he does not expect Museveni to stand in 2006.

      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.

      "All the bloodshed Uganda has had started with Obote changing the 1965 constitution," he said.

      Obote was twice deposed by the military. He is now in exile in Zambia. 
      Bidandi was one of the first Cabinet ministers to oppose another term for the President through the proposed amendment of the Constitution.

      He was dropped from Cabinet on May 23 last year, after a long stint as Local Government minister.

      "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





Gook 

"You can't separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom."- Malcom X 




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