Abed Bwanika, the MP for Kimaanya-Kabonera, has petitioned the National Unity Platform seeking to cause a meeting to debate and pronounce the party’s position on the Anti-Homosexuality law.
In a petition addressed to the party’s deputy president for Eastern Uganda, John Baptist Nambeshe, the vocal party MP says the meeting will go a long way in clearing the air on the party’s stand on the controversial matter.
He says party president Robert Kyagulanyi’s interview with BBC in December 2023 created the impression that the party is “friendly and supports LGBTQ+ as opposed to Uganda’s Anti-Homosexuality Act and the Penal Code Act.”
He claims that LGBTQ+ sponsors and organizations have in the past month given awards to Kyagulanyi in recognition of the party’s struggle in “the promotion of all human rights including rights of LGBTQ+.”
Bwanika alleges that Kyagulanyi’s dress code has evolved to suit the colours and fashion of the LGBTQ+ community as evidenced by the “bell bottom fashion dress and purple colours during the BAFTA awards ceremony in London.”
“Therefore, by the foregoing your humble petitioner prays that a meeting of the lawful organ of the party be convened in the fastest instance to debate and pronounce an unequivocal position of the National Unity Platform on LGBTQ+,” Bwanika writes in his petition dated March 25, 2024.
Kyagulanyi has severally denied that the party is in bed with the gay community but has said that the Anti-Homosexuality law was passed to target the government’s critics like himself.
Bwanika’s salvo is the latest in a series of bitter exchanges between the legislator and NUP stemming from the party’s feud with Mathias Mpuuga, the former Leader of Opposition and MP for Nyendo-Mukungwe in Masaka.
In several media appearances, Bwanika has claimed that some senior leaders in NUP are state agents, that the party has no internal democracy and that there is no financial accountability within nascent party.
It remains to be seen whether the party will act upon his request or whether it will ignore it.