Mr Joseph Chamberlain, the British Liberal politician, reportedly retorted at some point in time in 1885 that, “In politics, there is no use in looking beyond the next fortnight”, but the people of Kamuli are preferring to ignore what he had to say. Why?
With the next general election a few months away, Ms Salaamu Musumba, the Vice President of the opposition Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) in charge of Eastern Uganda, has made a statement of intent – she is going to challenge Ms Rebecca Kadaga, who is the Deputy Vice President of the ruling NRM.
Ms Kadaga, who is the Speaker of Parliament, has been the Kamuli district Woman Member of Parliament since 1989 when the National Resistance Council (NRC) was expanded to allow for non-historical members of the NRM to join the House.
Ms Musumba made the statement of intent last week when she personal picked up nomination forms from the party’s headquarters in Najjanankumbi before confirming her intentions to Sunday Monitor in a telephone interview on Friday.

Doubts
The announcement has, however, been received with reservation and doubts among sections of the electorate in Kamuli and the rest of Busoga region. The doubters can as well be spared for being so.
Early in March 2015, it emerged that all was not well between Ms Kadaga and Ms Musumba. During a graduation party in Buyende, Ms Kadaga publicly chided Ms Musumba for putting public servants in the district on edge even when they had been instrumental in her 2012 election to the District Chair.
“I know you are my very good friend and sister, but there is something I want you to think about tonight. FDC could not even make 10,000 votes. The support that propelled you to where you are now was from NRM, I don’t want you to forget that,” Ms Kadaga said.

That led to speculation that Ms Musumba would hit back by either taking her on or lining up someone else to do the dirty work for her. After all, it was her who had always backed Ms Prossy Naikoba to battle Kadaga for the 2006 and 2011 polls. Musumba, however, made several public statements in which she backed Kadaga, even going as far as referring to her as the “gem of the region”.
But in a surprise move in November 2015, Ms Musumba sparked off a lot of excitement in the region when she dispatched an emissary to the Kamuli District Returning Officer’s office to pick up nomination forms for the same position and followed that up with numerous interviews in the media.

At the time she seemed angry with Ms Kadaga over what she believed was a deliberate effort by the latter to render her politically irrelevant.
“Am I the type that you can wake up one day and declare irrelevant in the politics of Kamuli?” she asked during one of the interviews.
That smacked of some level of seriousness, but Ms Musumba later made a turn around and opted to contest for the Kamuli Municipality seat, where she was beaten by NRM’s Hajati Watongola. So what is it that has changed since then? Why is she once again expressing interest in a seat that she had given up on and opted to contest elsewhere?

Reasons
It is, of course, Ms Salaamu Musumba’s constitutional right to contest any elective post in Kamuli or any other part of the country, but it would appear that she was in announcing her candidature bent on forcing Ms Kadaga to make a political statement in regard to her future.
“She (Ms Kadaga) told the electorate during the elections that this was going to be her last term as Kamuli District Woman MP. I am moving in to ensure that there is no vacuum,” she said.

We all know that “if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck”. So whereas Ms Kadaga has not yet issued an official statement regarding her future, a campaign team has been put in place and pieces are being moved around in a manner that suggests that she will be a candidate in next year’s elections, which would suggest that there would be no vacuum for Ms Musumba to fill. Would she still challenge her for the seat?
Musumba answers in the affirmative. She then points to something akin to a personal fight