The President General of the Democratic Party (DP), Norbert Mao has lashed out at DP legislators who came out and accuse him of misleading the party.
He described such members of the party who have come out to criticize and accuse him of misguiding the party as lumpens
Mao said those challenging his leadership of the party are people of questionable character and with divided loyalty.
On Wednesday last week, DP legislators held a press conference at parliament where the MPs questioned Norbert Mao leadership and accused him of failing planned party grassroot elections.
This followed the cancellation of the DP grassroot elections ahead of the party delegates conference scheduled for March 2019.
However, while speaking to the media on Saturday, Mao said: “I reject the accusations by those who say there is anybody disorganising elections, I also wish to let the country know that no individual not even the president can undo the decision of the National Executive Committee,”
Mao also revealed that he issued a circular saying anybody who disrupts the process that the National Executive Committee approved will be subjected to disciplinary action.
He further said that the ongoing bickering and accusations against him by some members of the party are motivated by the divided royalty from people of questionable characters.
“Those accusations are just cheap shot which I usually ignore and they are promoted by the media because they are dramatic and they are promoted by comedians, they are lumpentics. They are educated, they have degrees but I call them lumpentics because they have no values anchoring their degrees,” he said.
Mao explained the roots of the current bickering within the Democratic Party noting that it can be traced back to the contest of the DP leadership in 2010.
“With the coming of Hajji Nasser Ntege Ssebagala, you could say a lot of lumpens came into the party. I call them lumpens because they don’t share the same values of DP. For them, DP is just a meal card, so the Ssebagala wave swept a lot of people into prominent positions of the party but people who don’t understand the value of DP, people who didn’t become DP by conviction,” Mao explained.
He said some of these people who are accusing him are people of rotten character, corrupt and compromised.
He cautioned that such leaders in the party will be eliminated in order to ensure its stability.
“We believe that we are capable of pushing away such people and it’s the job of the delegates to push away such people from the party,” he said.
He further expressed unkind words for the people who doubt his leadership ability and skills.
“I led Gulu district local government lifting it from the bottom to make it the best performing district in Uganda therefore the problem in DP is not leadership of Norbert Mao, it is poor fellowship and lack of culture which is value based and that is what we need to restore,” he said.
Mao won the DP party leadership in 2010 after a divisive contest against Hajji Nasser Ntege Ssebagala.
This led to the wave of factionalism that has since characterised the party after Ssebagala broke away from the Democratic Party to form his political party; Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) that is now defunct.