The Democratic Party (DP) has officially handed over Inter Party Organisation for Dialogue (IPOD) leadership to the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC).
However, the ruling political party, National Resistance Movement (NRM), boycotted the handover as their seats remained empty.
Gerald Siranda, the chairperson of the IPOD council handed over the mantle to FDC’s Nathan Nandala Mafabi while DP president Norbert Mao who has been the president of the summit handed over to Patrick Oboi Amuriat, the FDC President
The chairperson of the elder’s Forum, justice James Ogoola congratulated all parties upon peacefully handing over of the mantle.
“I want to congratulate you for the peaceful handover of authority from green, I used to call it blue but now Hon Musumba tells me that it is sky blue. The nation has applauded this series of IPOD dialogue and summit at a time like this, we need national harmony not national discord,” he said.
FDC Secretary General Nathan Nandala Mafabi said; “We have not come here to confront with anybody, we are coming to work together and to create space for everybody in this country to participate equally in the politics of the country,”
He noted that FDC will ensure transparency in operations and there will be nothing which will be done by anybody and accountability will be availed to all the members.
The DP president General, Norbert Mao said that DP has never hesitated to handover the authority.
He also said that NRM as a key player in this dialogue process, there was no need to shun the ceremony.
“As DP we have never hesitated to handover, in fact we are the only party that has ever handed over power peacefully in the republic of Uganda. IPOD still has challenges as indeed you can see by the empty yellow chairs but I insist that the potential of IPOD outweighs the challenges,” he noted.
However, according to the NRM, they were never officially invited to the handover ceremony.
“We didn’t boycott the event as some people have perceived it and we have attended to many of these functions before but we did not have an official and formal invitation,” said Rogers Mulindwa, the NRM spokesperson.
He said the only the message they received was through WhatsApp and they were waiting for confirmation.
“What the Secretary General, Hon Kasule Lumumba had was WhatsApp message from the IPOD secretariat. We expected to have received a confirmation and we never receive it to that effect,” he said.
According to the Memorandum of Understanding, IPOD leadership rotates every after six months.
The FDC therefore is currently both the chair of the IPOD Summit and IPOD Council.
The Summit is composed of leaders of political parties and the Council is composed of the Secretary Generals and other four representatives.
The Government and Opposition Whip are also members of the Council.
The FDC party will aim at pushing for the ratification of decisions that were made in Munyonyo where IPOD Council deliberated on the management of public rallies.
IPOD houses four parties that include; Democratic Party (DP), Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), Uganda People’s Congress (UPC) and National Resistance Movement (NRM).
IPOD is facilitated by the Netherlands Institute for Multiparty Democracy (NIMD) and was formed to initiate dialogue and exchange of ideas among political parties in the country with a view of improving electoral democracy.
