Dr. Kiying says “we must stop this madness”
[Global: Uganda]
Dozens of armed forces in military police fatigue stormed and surrounded the home of an aide to the Australia-based cardiologist Dr. Aggrey Kiyingi who has declared his candidacy for the Ugandan presidential election slated for March, 2016.
The regime of the Ugandan dictator Gen. Yoweri Museveni has previously declared the surgeon persona non grata and his police chief Gen. Kale Kayihura announced an international arrest warrant was being pursued.
Dr. Kiyingi is a Ugandan living in Australia and said he’ll use constitutional means to oust Gen. Museveni who has been in power for the last 30 years.
One of Dr Kiyingis political mobilizers, Frank Bulira who went to the Uganda Electoral Commission to pick up the nomination papers for the cardiologist last week had his house at Lunguja Road, Plot 20, surrounded by the military personnel early morning of Tuesday, September 8.
“It is still surrounded,” Dr. Kiyingi said in an interview, adding that: “Every peace loving person should voice their objection to this tyranny and intimidation. Frank Bulira has not committed any crime.”
According to Dr. Kiyingi, the action followed the Electoral Commission’s refusal to give the presidential nomination forms to Mr. Bulira, who had gone to the commission’s offices.
Dr. Kiyingi said his representatives provided all the necessary documentation the Electoral Commission had requested, including a letter authorizing them to pick his forms and other required instruments. “The EC representative acknowledge receipt of my delegation and my request,” he said.
In the exclusive telephone interview with this newspaper, Dr. Kiyingi said: “This is kind of intimidation to scare away my agents because they presented everything that was required to pick the nomination form.”
“They intend to stop me but I’m not moved with their cruel tricks. Every peace loving individual should condemn such antics,” he added.
Gen. Museveni faces a groundswell of protests. His former key aides, Dr. Kizza Besigye and Amama Mbabazi, who until last year was his prime minister, are both running against him as well and drawing tens of thousands of people at their rallies.
In 2005, when Dr. Besigye returned from exile in South Africa to contest against Museveni ahead of the 2006 presidential elections he was harassed by Gen. Museveni’s security agents.
Dr. Besigye was arrested, detained and was nominated as a candidate for the Forum For Democratic Change (FDC) party when he was inside the prison.
He spent the biggest part of his time between the campaign trails in Gen. Museveni’s Kangaroo court.
Dr. Besigye contends he was robbed of his victory at the polls, a claim that since been confirmed by Gen. David Sejusa, a.k.a Tinyefunza, the man who was Co-Cordinator of Military Intelligence for Gen. Museveni at the time of those elections.
Whilst in the U.K., Gen. Sejusa told this newspaper that Dr. Besigye won the 2006 presidential elections by 69% but that the army intervened, doctored the results and handed the victory to Gen. Museveni; Gen. Sejusa, who has now returned to Uganda from exile has never retracted that statement.
In all previous election campaigns, Gen. Museveni has used his goons to unleash violence against voters perceived to be supporters of his opponents.
“We need to put a stop to Museveni’s madness,” Dr. Kiyingi said. “He’s using and confusing the East African leaders to help harass politicians.”
The noted surgeon travels freely around the world to speak and offer expert opinion on complex operations and yet is being blocked from standing as a candidate, a right guaranteed by the constitution, he said.
He also deplored the destruction Gen. Museveni’s reign has caused beyond Uganda’s borders.
Gen. Museveni launched in 1990 the war that ousted the former Rwandan President Juvenal Habyarimana four years later, sparking massacres; he was involved in was in what was then Zaire, now DR Congo; Sudanese People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) leader John Garang died in a suspicious helicopter clash — the chopper belonged to Gen. Museveni and he was his way to South Sudan after visiting the Ugandan in his Rwakitura ranch; and, he was also involved in the 2007 Kenya election mischief and violence.
“He is now preparing a 1994 Rwandan version in Uganda ahead of next year’s presidential election,” Dr. Kiyingi said, in reference to the ongoing training of shady militia groups in Uganda.
Police chief Gen. Kayihura recently announced the training of selected civilians as “crime preventers.” Whilst retired major and perennial political violence instigator, the notorious Maj. Kakooza Mutale recently rekindled his militia activities.
Dr. Kiyingi believed the orders to surround Mr. Bulira’s home came from Gen. Museveni himself, who has a tight rein on all police and military activities in Uganda.
The regime earlier this year accused the Sydney-based cardiologist of funding and sponsoring the mysterious murders of Muslim clerics in Uganda, which Dr. Kiyingi has denied and called “the usual Museveni criminal acts and antics to intimidate any potential challenger to his 30-year tyrannical rule.”
Dr. Kiyingi notes that he had started development projects including his business empire the Dehezi International Company, which made several donations of computers to churches and schools before he was framed of the 2005 murder of his wife, Robinah Kiyingi.
After a year of court battles, Dr. Kiyingi was acquitted of organizing the shooting and murder of his own wife.
Robinah Kiyingi, then a prominent lawyer, had been commissioned by Transparency International to investigate the embezzlement by Gen. Museveni’s government. She had just finished the investigations and a compilation of report, which was damaging to Gen. Museveni’s ministers, he said.
Ms. Kiyingi’s killers took only her laptop computer, which contained the report of her investigations. Dr. Kiyingi acknowledges that he had marriage issues with his wife, which made it convenient for the regime to concoct the frameup.
Ms. Kiyingi’s probe found that millions of dollars went missing that had been donated to Uganda via the Global Alliance for Vaccine and Immunization (GAVI). It’s been reported that even Uganda’s first lady, Janet Museveni received some of those funds, according to Gen. Museveni’s own former junior health minister Mike Mukula.
Even while he was in jail for a year on the murder charges, Dr. Kiyingi, a globally sought after cardiologist, consulted other cardiologists through telephone conference whenever there was a complex heart surgery.
Even with his acquittal, Dr. Kiyingi notes that the regime orchestrated a lawsuit against him by a non-existent plaintiff supposedly named Diana Asiimwe, who claimed Dr. Kiyingi owed him large sums of money.
Although the purported plaintiff never showed up for a court proceeding and even the Ugandan police said she was non-existent, a Ugandan court ruled in her favor and six of Dr. Kiyingi’s properties in Kampala were taken from him to purportedly compensate a plaintiff who never appeared.
