Dr Kizza Besigye

I have been voting for Dr. Kiizza Besigye ever since 2001 when he started contesting for the Uganda Presidential Elections. I never liked him because he is was a Medical Doctor, Westerner like me or because he was a high ranking military official at the rank of a Colonel. My reason for liking him is very simple, “he is terribly a honest man” and has the best vision for Uganda manifested through his consistent political actions over the years.

Dr Kiiza Besigye comes from a very wealthy family, his father [Kifefe] was a very rich business man in Rukungiri District during those days [owning a petrol station in Rukungiri Town]. In addition, Besigye was one of the bright minds at the time who went on to pursue a Bachelors Degree of Medicine & Surgery at the prestigious Makerere University, Kampala [by that time – even today – medicine was for the brightest minds in the country]. After his studies, Besigye went to work as a medical Doctor at Agha Khan Hospital in Nairobi, Kenya which is one of the best health facilities in the world at a time when medical education was highly prized and medical Doctors were in short supply.

He never stopped at that, he left the comfort of his well paying job at Agha Khan Hospital in Nairobi in the early 1980’s to join Yoweri Kaguta Museveni in the Bush and liberate the country from a dictatorship of Obote II.

In 1999, as a high ranking military official, he openly broke ranks with President Museveni for diverting from the core objectives that took them to the gruelling 5 year bush war that left an enormous destruction on people’s property and caused an enormous loss of life to the country. Since then, he has sustained the struggle against the Museveni dictatorship, not on personal hatred as some people would like to assume but on principle.

FDC leader Dr Kizza Besigye during his arrest by police in Kampala, 2011

Despite his status, he has constantly suffered enormous public humiliations at the hands of a brutal regime through constant arrests and torture but remained on track.

I had spent long without meeting him physically, but recently on his campaign trail in Western Uganda, I had an opportunity to have a long chat with him at Travelers Inn Hotel, Fort Portal on 15th December, 2015 at night.Together, with the District Executive headed by Ms. Nyakato Rusoke and the national FDC campaign team including FDC President, Maj. Gen. Mugisha Muntu, Ms. Ingrid Turinawe, Hon. Nzou Stephen (MP) and the Rukungiri Municipality MP among others we discussed wide ranging issues like the progress of the 2016 campaign, FDC manifesto among others.

I would like to thank the people of Madi county & Terego for coming out in big numbers at all our 7 rallies. pic.twitter.com/wjIPbd5qIZ

— Kifefe Kizza-Besigye (@kizzabesigye1) December 29, 2015

Dr. Besigye was still the same person I met in 2011 with the same zeal and determination to liberate the country from dictatorship and create opportunities for Ugandans.

The writer is the FDC Power 10 Deputy Coordinator – Kabarole District, FDC Secretary General – Fort Portal Municipality, Former MP Candidate – FDC, Fort Portal Municipality. The writer also teaches Journalism & Mass Communications at Mountains of the Moon University, Fort Portal.