Olara Otunnu's Return To Uganda

[ByaseL]

Angelo Izama
Kampala

Mr. Olara Otunnu

The family of deceased two-time Ugandan President Apollo Milton Obote has said the Uganda People’s Congress party ‘prodigal son’ Olara Otunnu is not welcome to visit their father’s grave at his ancestral home in Akokoro village, Lira District.

Mr Otunnu, a member of UPC till 1985 when he severed ties with the party to serve the short-lived Tito Okello junta that had just overthrown Obote, is expected to return to the country this Saturday after more than 20 years in exile.
Upon his return Mr Otunnu, who is being fronted by some UPC supporters to contest for the party presidency and possibly take on President Museveni in the 2011 presidential elections, was scheduled to lay a wreath on Obote’s grave on Tuesday as part of a countrywide series of events spread over two weeks.

But the heir to the Obote family estate, Mr Tony Akaki, in a statement issued to the press on Monday said that while their home will remain open to every visitor without exception, Mr Otunnu had abused that generosity by announcing that he planned to visit Obote’s grave on August 22 even before notifying the family.

 

[Namtih58]

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oIRHf0Yshc"]NTV[/ame]

 

[Sophist]

We need text Please!!!!

 

[ByaseL]

by Austin Ejiet
Kampala

I, too, know Olara Otunnu. I had the privilege of sharing an undergraduate hall of residence with him at Makerere University during the early to mid 1970s. The military government that had seized power from the first independence government was still jittery about any opposition, real or imagined; and the soldiers’ only way of dealing with what they thought was subversion, was swift summary execution. It wasn’t an easy time, least of all for an Acholi, to start dabbling in politics, including seemingly harmless student politics.

When Otunnu offered himself as candidate for the Makerere University Guild presidency in 1973, there was something of a political earthquake. As an individual he was a small, shy, retiring and very sober individual.
But the moment he started opening his mouth to make campaign speeches, we all suddenly realised that we had an unusual political phenomenon on our hands. He had a facility with words to match the very best of Africa’s pioneer statesmen and orators. He brushed aside the combined efforts of two formidable opponents who, out of desperation, agreed that their combined vote should go to only one of them as a means of denying him victory.

Otunnu the elected guild president turned out to be better than even the Otunnu the candidate. With political astuteness and toughness, he succeeded in implementing most of what he had promised in his manifesto.
Some of those landmarks such as the “Otunnu Avenue” between the main campus across the dreaded Katanga, to the new Mulago Hospital, survive to this day. His greatest challenge came when the military government decided to scrap student allowances popularly known as “boom”, and unilaterally cut back on numerous other privileges.

I have watched or attended many rallies; but none more dramatic or memorable than the meeting in the Makerere Main Hall where this small man with a half hoarse voice told off the corpulent army officers president Amin had sent to save the strike .

It was political eloquence and courage at its best. We knew that a point of no return had been crossed and that something would have to happen. To escape certain death the guild president was spirited out of the country that night through the connivance of one or two foreign diplomatic missions, in collusion, ironically, with some elements of the feared State Research Bureau who privately felt that a man of such potential was too valuable to butcher. We later heard that Julius Nyerere had paid fees out of his own savings to send Otunnu to the University of Oxford to complete his law degree. The rest, as they say, is history. By the time this paper hits the streets Olara Otunnu might well have accomplished his “second coming”.

The Uganda of 2009 is different from that of 1979 when he tried to shore up the Binaisa administration. Maybe there was tear gas yesterday and maybe there wasn’t. That will surely come when Otunnu invokes his fiery rhetoric of three and half decades ago. But this spat with Milton Obote’s family, denying him access (for now) to the grave of the founding father of the republic, is a dramatic eye-opener.

Some members of the Obote family clearly feel that the ex-head of state has gone into history vilified and unappreciated. The other will resurrect the slightest hint of betrayal and hold it against the perceived betrayer.
I don’t have the slightest doubt that somebody (from the Obote family) will think better of this perhaps sooner than later.

As the old cliché goes, in politics there are no permanent enemies or friends, only permanent interests. It is that kind of logic that has seen one of Idi Amin’s sons, one Jaffer Amin, travel to Butiama (where Mwalimu Nyerere is buried), to pay his respects at the former president’s grave, and even conduct lengthy prayers with one of Nyerere’s sons without apparent rancour or bitterness.

During his student days Otunnu had coined a slogan that struck a chord with most of students, namely “we have a common destiny”. Perhaps the same sentiment will stand him in good stead this time round.

 

[DrMosha]

What did Mr Otunnu do after completing his law degree at Oxford University? Why did it take him so long to return?

 

[MzalendoHalisi]

Huyu hataweza politics chafu za Uganda! Ni mstaarabu mno! Angebaki tu huko2 UN!

Mazingira ya 1980 na sasa ni tofauti!

Aaangalie M7 asimkamate!

 

[ByaseL]

What did Mr Otunnu do after completing his law degree at Oxford University? Why did it take him so long to return?

By the way he was at Oxford with Tony Blair the former PM of United Kingdom and they are close friends. He returned to Uganda and was a minister in Obote II government ( 1981-1986) and served briefly in the Tito Okello junta as a foreign minister until Museveni took over in 1986 when he went into exile. Since then he has been working with the United Nation at senior levels in various capacities. At one time he was considered for the most top job of UN (secretary general) but the Uganda Government blocked him. He has been travelling on the Ivory Coast passport until recently when the Uganda Government decided to give him the Ugandan travelling documents. Typical of African politics!

 

[ByaseL]

Angelo Izama & Gerald Bareebe
Kampala

Senior Forum for Democratic Change officials secretly met Dr Olara Otunnu at the weekend and invited him to join their party, Daily Monitor can reveal.

The meeting, held on Sunday afternoon in Kampala, was the first formal interaction between officials from FDC, the largest opposition party, and Mr Otunnu, a former foreign affairs minister who returned from 23 years of exile on Saturday and who is known to belong to the Uganda Peoples’ Congress party.

FDC Vice President and Leader of the Opposition in Parliament, Prof. Morris Ogenga Latigo, who attended the closed-door meeting on Sunday, said the decision to open the party doors to Mr Otunnu would increase the party’s appeal in northern Uganda.

He said the return of Mr Otunnu, an Acholi from northern Uganda, has “many implications” for the opposition vote in the north where they constitute a large voting bloc.

“Acholi in UPC are likely to see Otunnu as an opportunity to revive their fortunes in the party and nationally,” Prof. Latigo said. “It’s the same issue with Norbert Mao in DP. FDC has in the past been accused of taking supporters away from some of these parties too but can offer Mr Otunnu the best platform for making a contribution to the struggle.”
The FDC leader said the party was ready to make “adjustments” to accommodate Mr. Otunnu.

 

[Baba_Enock]

Otunnu - why did he go on "self-exile" at the first place?

 

[MzalendoHalisi]

Otunu alikimbia 86 baada ya M7 kuchukua Uganda! Alikuwa waziri wa nje wa Tito Okello!

M7 alimnyima passport..sema serikali ya Ivory Coast wakampa Passport aliyokuwa anatumia hadi karibuni!

 

[Sophist]

"For those who don't know, Olara Otunnu was the young man who was chosen by the Military Council of General Tito Okello to become Uganda's foreign minister after the Obote II government was overthrown in 1985. Olara Otunnu is also a cousin of the late Tito Okello.
When Tito Okello overthrew Obote, he brought back many former Uganda Army soldiers who had served under Idi Amin and who after the 1979 Liberation war had fled to Sudan and Zaire.
These are the men who came to Kampala under Major Amin Onzi and others and we used to call them the "Anyanya" but there were also some Sudanese supporting Okello's coup.
It is also important to know that the fact that Tito Okello an Acholi could bring back Amin's men to work alongside him shows that maybe he knew that all along Amin's army was not so murderous as we were told. We leave history to judge this matter.
Then the story of Brig. Toko slapping Museveni is true. Actually what happened was that during the peace talks, Museveni was behaving the way General Laurent Nkunda is behaving now in Congo whereby you agree to go for peace talks as a way of consolidating your military position and getting reinforcements.
Once you have reinforced, you come out and claim that the side you are negotiating with has violated the peace terms and so you are going back to fighting. President Joseph Kabila of the DRC it seems is too inexperienced to understand the way Museveni and his stooges like Nkunda and Kagame behave during peace talks.
This tactic was also used to weaken and eventually topple President Juvenal Habyarimana's government. Apparently, Museveni taught his boys, because that is how the RPF to become strong and eventually to take power in Kigali.
But back to Toko, he stood up at one point during the talks and walked over to where Museveni was seated and slapped him badly, shouting ?Museveni, why are you fighting your wars in Uganda when you are not even a Ugandan?
Security had to rush in and cool Toko down. President Daniel arap Moi who was presiding over the talks ordered the media?s cameras to be taken and the film of Toko slapping Museveni to be destroyed. There was a media blackout on the incident and the NRA negotiating team demanded that Toko should be removed from the Tito Okello negotiating side as a condition to remain in the talks.
That is how Toko who was from West Nile and the Vice Chairman of the Military Council left the Nairobi peace talks and when Museveni took power, Toko refused to step in Uganda for many years.
Museveni used another man with West Nile blood, Col. Kahinda Otafiire, to try and convince Toko to return, which he did in 1993. When Museveni said at Kololo airstrip in 1993 Independence Day that Ugandans should never allow to hand power to swine, Toko was seated in the VIP stand behind Museveni and sources in Arua tell us that Museveni was aiming the statement at Brig. Toko.
When you see the Acholi fighting Museveni for many years and you see Joseph Kony persisting, it is because of this bitterness which Aluma is telling us about.
The UNLA had defeated Museveni militarily and up to now it hurts Museveni to admit that. The NRA took power in 1986 not because it was strong but because there was misunderstanding within the Military Council and within the UNLA at the time.
It is like how Sheffield United can take advantage of a defensive error within Arsenal and end up scoring a surprise goal although Arsenal is normally the stronger team.
You can see that Museveni has failed to defeat Kony. The Acholi had power in their hands in 1985 and they could have held it for a long time because they are very serious soldiers and brave. But it was defensive errors which cost them power.
That is also why Museveni maintains a huge PGB to guard him. He is still disturbed by the fact that he came to power through a defensive error by the Okello junta, not because his boys with their big hips were great commanders.
He also gained the civilian support and international media support by fighting a cynical war in Luwero whereby Museveni used the NRA to massacre civilians, blame the UNLA, and turn civilians against Obote."