Maureen Kyalya Ex-Museveni Advisor to Run for President

Maureen Kyalya, an outspoken former senior presidential advisor on poverty alleviation in Busoga, announced on Monday that she will run for president in 2016.

So far Kyalya becomes the first woman to declare a run for the presidency going into the 2016 general election. Kyalya has lately been in the United Kingdom, after she abandoned her office at State House last year, citing “oppression and frustration,” by her bosses.

She said she wants the top job to save Busoga sub-region from being mere followers in Ugandan politics.

“I am not an advocate for tribalism; on the contrary, I am an advocate for unity and togetherness but I cannot continue burying the frustration that Busoga has never even had a presidential candidate… … ..” Kyalya said.

Kyalya said she would not have declared her bid if Speaker of Parliament, Rebecca Kadaga had ‘not shied away’ from the presidential race. Kadaga told her supporters in Kamuli last week that she would seek to retain her Kamuli woman MP seat, a position she has held for the last 20 years.

“Even if I realize that I have only one vote, honestly I will stand for president in 2016 such that Busoga is saved from the humiliation,” she said.

FALLING OUT

Kyalya recently courted controversy in the Busoga sub-region when she supported Prince Columbus Wambuzi against the eventual Kyabazinga, Gabula Nadiope IV, even after President Museveni had met the king.

The former presidential advisor said her stand on the matter accelerated her fallout with State House officials, who warned her at one time when she offered Wambuzi a lift in her State House vehicle.

Kyalya joined the NRM from the opposition Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) in February 2012. Before that, she had run on the FDC ticket in the 2011 election for the Jinja Woman MP seat, which she lost to NRM’s Agnes Nabirye in court.

Because of that history, Kyalya does not enjoy much sympathy both within the NRM, whose Jinja officials protested her appointment from the time it was made, and the FDC who see her as a traitor. Kyalya said she is neither NRM nor FDC. She said she was planning to register her own new political party, the African Restoration Party (ARP).

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Source: The Observer

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