On Friday, the 28th of July 2023, the FDC Party was slated to have a special/extraordinary meeting of its National Council. The ugly scenes at the Party Headquarters on the days leading to and the actual day of the meeting are now in the public domain thanks to the wide coverage by the local media fraternity and I will not belabour the same.
Some members who were manhandled and/or prevented from attending the meeting only saw the resolutions on TV and later on received a copy of the report that was purportedly adopted by the National Council under the stewardship of the National Chairperson Ambassador Wasswa Birigwa.
The said report that was shared on all official Party channels with the general public cannot be left to go unchallenged. I will go ahead and interrogate it;
The Quorum Question;
Article 20 of the FDC Party Constitution spells out the composition and functions of the National Council. A glance at the said article will show you that the National Council must have 250 members at a minimum. The Constitution is silent on the requisite quorum for any of the meetings of the major party organs (the National Council inclusive). This therefore means that for proper functioning, utmost good faith is assumed on the part of the leaders to at least borrow from established best practices locally and internationally. These dictate that for a meeting of such an important organ of the Party to be considered quorate and to take decisions that bind the party members, at least one third of the eligible and voting members ought to be present. In this case, we have been told [by Hon. Salamu Musumba who addressed the press after the meeting] that the report was adopted by 66 members (58 voted for and 8 against). This falls below the one third threshold of at least 75 members. Hon. Nandala Mafabi, a lawyer and accountant of all people ought to know, preach and practise the best governance practices at least for the deepening of democracy and transparency in the management of party affairs.
With less than 30% of the eligible members voting, the outcome and all decisions of such a meeting become highly impugned and MUST not be left to bind other members of the Party.
No proof of Investigation;
In the impugned report, under 2.1, it is clearly stated that in November 2022, the National Council resolved to constitute an Elders’ Committee to resolve a specific dispute between two senior FDC leaders over the contentious issue of “dirty money”. Having identified the issue of contention to be the dirty money, it is rather obvious that the committee would seek to;
Examine the party’s audited financial statements, bank statements, loan agreements ((if any), records of any collaterals used to obtain credit from any person(s) in the period when the dirty money is alleged to have entered the party in a bid to follow the money trail.
Appoint or co-opt a professional fraud examiner or financial expert in case the committee lacked a person with the competence to investigate cases of fraud.
Conduct a rigorous comparison between the expenditure sanctioned by the party’s Secretary General and Treasurer General in the period when the dirty money is alleged to have entered the party and state their findings as to whether such expenditure was commensurate with the said income on record. With reference to the foregoing, the impugned report by the Elders’ Committee does not show any attempts to establish and follow the money trail save for the verbal submissions of the persons they interacted with. Without any evidence of investigative effort made by the said Elders’ Committee, the report is not worth the paper on which it was printed and therefore MUST never have been submitted to the National Council.
Amount of the dirty money;
In the impugned report, the submissions of Hon. Nandala, Hon. Ekanya and Hon. Jack Sabiti to the Elders’ Committee suggested that the practice of not disclosing all sources of party funds has been in existence right from the time when Dr. Besigye was still the President of the Party. The trio’s stance and that of the committee seems to suggest that while this may be wrong, it is normal in the FDC and other political parties around the world. A junior accounting student then will ask them to explain more how taxes are handled in such cases and as to whether the sum from such sources also remains a hidden one. The impugned report highlights an estimated figure of 2.7 billion shillings [according to the Secretary General], we are not being told how much was borrowed from the ‘legitimate’ sources. Other than the verbal submissions of the party officials, there is no alternative evidence on the amount of money that was borrowed by the party from or by the Secretary General.
Voodoo Mathematics;
In the impugned report (as shown in Fig.1 below), in two separate sections of the report, an account of a repayment from Dr. Besigye is given for the 300 million shillings advanced to him by Hon. Nandala Mafabi. This is done on pages 8 and 14 where it is stated by the Secretary General and Chief Administrative Officer that after paying back three instalments of 120 million, 80 million and 23,600,000/-, there remained a balance of 670,000/-. The correct addition gives a total repayment of 223,600,000/leaving a balance of 75,730,000/-. Why then would a report of such a committee be allowed to stand with such voodoo mathematics that does not account for almost 75,730,000/- owed by Dr. Besigye? Before transmitting these inaccurate figures into their report, did the committee of elders confirm that Dr. Besigye is listed in the Party’s official debtors’ list as a debtor to the tune of the stated balance? Your guess is as good as mine.
The Ghost or Angelic lender of the dirty money;
In Fig.1 above, Hon. Nandala (6.3.4) casually tells the committee that he ‘mobilised’ some money for agents and requested Dr. Besigye to keep for him. He does not provide any details of where he mobilised the money from and under what conditions (terms of repayment and duration if it was a loan)! He asserts that the money was repaid by Dr. Besigye on election day (14th January and the following day 15th January), but he does not elaborate if it was expended on the payment of agents as earlier stated. The committee also does NOT show any effort made to ascertain if indeed the money paid agents and what happened to the agents that would have been paid by the unpaid/unrefunded balance of 75,730,000/- owed by Dr. Besigye?
In 6.3.7, the committee further claims that Hon. Nandala ‘demonstrated’ (I don’t know how) that the money was from ‘legitimate’ sources and he intimated that the money he lent to the party would be paid back with no interest. In just one paragraph, Hon. Nandala morphed from being a mobiliser of the money to the actual lender to the Party. In short, he was the one who identified the funding gap[amount] to be filled, mobilised the lender, quickly became the lender and then wrote off the interest before going on to appropriate and spend the money. So, Hon. Nandala is/was the alpha and omega and star of this movie of dirty money. Unfortunately for him, he does not satisfactorily answer the question of who was the ‘lender’ or source of this money. In such circumstances, a reasonable guess is that the lender is a ghost or a heavenly angel!
Lack of seriousness;
In Fig.2 below , Hon. Nandala (in 6.3.9b) cleverly does not give any details of when the two pickup cars were bought and how much the two pickups cost nor where the money to buy them came from and in response the elders did not press him further on this, but found it worthy to report that they confirmed that the transfer of vehicles to the party names was indeed effected!
In other words, Hon. Nandala decided to ignore the questions at hand, set his own questions and answered them by taking the elders on a wild goose chase and they opted to enjoy the ride. This is why I pose the question as to whether these elders were equal to the task at hand. A task that required them to ensure that those running the party are persons of impeccable character and accountable to the members. In failing to execute this task with distinction or merit, the elders have raised further questions on the calibre of cadres charged with the management of FDC Party affairs.
Undisclosed expenditures of the dirty money;
In 6.2.3 and 6.4.6.1, the impugned report by the Elders’ Committee states that Hon. Amuriat, the Party President, also received 280 million shillings from the kitty of the dirty money in question. It is however surprising that the committee did not find it worthy to put Hon. Amuriat, Hon. Ekanya and Hon. Nandala to task to explain when this money was disbursed, what this money was used for and if it was part of the dirty money that they insisted was ‘borrowed’ money. Was the 280 million used by the Party President to pay the staff that aided his Presidential campaign or was it for his personal use? It is also funny how the committee did not ask Hon. Nandala to provide a comprehensive list of all recipients of the money that he had lent to the party be it for campaign support or personal use.
Further to that, in 6.2.4, the committee states that Dr. Besigye hinted on a meeting that the leaders had held at the Party Chairman’s home in Busabala where they had tasked the Party’s Treasurer General to give a report of how much [dirty money] that they had received and how it was disbursed.
In fact in a subsequent meeting, where the report of the Treasurer General was expected, Hon. Nandala became more evasive and questioned the capacity in which Dr. Besigye was asking for the report. He promised to furnish him with the report after it has been processed by the relevant party organs. Again, there is no evidence that the committee made any efforts to use this as a clue to press the Treasurer General to furnish them with these details. To date, an exhaustive list of all recipients of the dirty money remains unknown to all the party members except Hon. Nandala. Without digging further to establish the truth about the source and spending of the dirty money, the committee failed in its assignment ab initio.
Facilitation of the Committee’s operations;
The Elders’ Committee does not mention anywhere in the report how their operations were facilitated. They only point out that they were assisted by the staff at the Party’s Headquarters. These staff are under the supervision of the Secretary General who was a subject of this investigation. I am surprised that the elders did not see that this creates a contradiction that greatly impugns the outcome of their investigations and could easily be cited as the reason they produced such a shoddy, lop-sided report that is not worth the paper on which it was printed.
Conflict within the Elders’ Committee;
The Elders’ Committee faced challenges when discharging their duties for instance, one member absconded from all their meetings and the elected Vice Chairperson[Tugume Stanley Katembeya] resigned and communicated his reasons(dissatisfaction) to the rest of the committee. He went further to submit a ‘minority report’ to the Chairperson, which was not tabled before the National Council. Among other issues, he cited lack of impartiality in the way the committee conducted its affairs. It is therefore disturbing that the committee did not find it worthy to report about the withdrawal and resignation of the Vice Chairperson. This further impugns their report.
Failure to observe the laws of natural justice;
Reading the impugned report of the Elders’ Committee, it is very clear that apart from Dr. Besigye and Mr. Bakandonda, all the other people who appeared before the committee made unsubstantiated allegations and accusations against the person of Dr. Besigye. In line with the laws and principles of natural justice, the committee ought to have had another interface with Dr. Besigye as a way of giving him a right of reply, but they did not. It is therefore possible that the members accusing him were recipients or beneficiaries of the dirty money and appeared before the committee with a conflicted conscience. If that was the case, it is safer and easier to gang up and come up with all these allegations against the whistleblower of the dirty money (Dr. Besigye).
Conclusion & Way forward;
The recommendations of the Elders’ Committee which include tolerance and reconciliation cannot take place in an environment where intimidation, mistrust, evasion of accountability, connivance, violence and deceit persist and are perpetuated by the Party leadership. These vices have eaten up the soul or kernel of the Party and since the opportunity to deal head-on with some of these ills through the Elders’ Committee has been lost, the party will only survive if these are addressed urgently by the Party members before the next delegates conference.
Those of us who are dissatisfied with the conduct of the Party President, Secretary General, Treasurer General and their acolytes especially around this issue of dirty money and the lengths to which they have gone to create a miscarriage of any processes pushing them to provide accountability need to embark on wide consultations with the membership of the party while imploring the dodgy leaders to do thorough soul searching. It does not matter how far you have travelled in the wrong direction, as long as you realise it and retrace your steps and move in the right direction.
Doreen Nyanjura is the Deputy Mayor of Kampala City.