Lira City: The battle of heavyweights and a few lightweights

Now that the dust has settled from the raucous NRM primaries, we can assess the state of affairs on the political chessboard of Lira City. Full disclosure: Yours truly participated in the NRM primaries and bit the political dust, proving once again the power of physics—political inertia trumps bright, progressive ideas from a novice.

With that favourite talking point of my detractors out of the way, let’s turn to the issue at hand: the political barometer in Lira City, with less than 200 days until election day.

Lira City is poised to host Uganda’s most contested and closely watched election. Two political behemoths—Hon. Betty Amongi, Minister of Gender, and Hon. Dr. Jane Ruth Aceng Ocero, Minister of Health—will go head-to-head in a clash of titans.

In the red corner stands, Hon. Betty Amongi, with over two decades of legislative experience and more than ten years as a cabinet minister. The mercurial Amongi is a seasoned political player who has never lost an election. She cut her teeth in elective politics as Apac District Woman MP before moving to Oyam South, occupying the former seat of the revered late Hon. Yefusa Okullu Epak—a storied legislator comparable to the late U.S. Senator John McCain in legislative achievements.

Amongi is a scion of the President Obote family, married to the embattled former first son and UPC president, Hon. Jimmy Akena, Lira City East Member of Parliament. She enters the Lira City race with a rejuvenated UPC, which, having won two back-to-back by-elections in Oyam and Dokolo, is brimming with confidence and enthusiasm. The UPC grassroots are fired up, with talk that Jimmy Akena, having overcome stage fright, may throw his hat in the ring and run for president.

However, Amongi is not without her Achilles’ heel. She carries significant baggage from largely forgettable stints at the Ministries of Lands, KCCA, and now Gender. Who can forget when she was hauled before Justice Catherine Bamugemereire over allegations of land grabbing, feigning ignorance of the English language, and requesting a Lango interpreter? It’s also widely rumoured that the daughter-in-law of the former president plays amoral politics in the school of Machiavelli, where the end justifies the means.

Moreover, the UPC is not a united family. There are many angelli rebelli (rebel angels) disgruntled by open nepotism within the party. For instance, Amongi has installed her brother to replace her in Oyam South. Hon. Eunice Apio Otuko is the wife of UPC Secretary General, the combative Hon. Fred Ebil. Her brother-in-law, Hon. Maxwell Ebong Akora has decamped from Maruzi to challenge Hon. Ocan Patrick in Apac Municipality, whose only crime seems to be lacking blood ties to UPC’s upper echelons.

Adding to the drama, the courts have thrown a curveball, declaring Jimmy Akena ineligible to run for UPC president, making the little-known Denis Enip the presumptive UPC president. This caught Akena flat-footed. Scrambling, he fired the UPC election commissioners who introduced Enip to the Electoral Commission as the new president.

To steady the ship, Akena called an emergency UPC delegates’ conference, but the police banned it for lack of timely notice. Cornered, Akena resorted to a virtual delegates’ conference. Enter Joseph Ochieno, the busybody UPC operative, who obtained a court injunction halting both physical and virtual meetings.

Frustrated and cornered, Akena, like a caged animal, defied court orders and held his delegates’ conference to amend the UPC constitution—“in the kitchen,” according to UPC Vice President for Lango, Morris Chris Ongom—extending Akena’s term.

Meanwhile, in the blue corner, Hon. Dr. Jane Ruth Aceng Ocero, a career medical doctor turned Minister of Health, rose to prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic with her calm and professional handling of the national response. Bitten by the political bug, she joined the fray and won the Lira City Woman MP seat in a landslide.

She is widely credited with improving service quality and infrastructure at Lira Regional Referral Hospital. Market women adore her, decking her campaign posters with flowery garlands and “applying makeup” to them with devotion.

Unlike Betty Amongi, who distributes one-day-old chicks per household in her poverty eradication drive, Dr. Jane provides interest-free grants to community groups as seed capital. She has also launched a sanitation project, repairing water sources and providing jerrycans, basins, and mama kits to mothers.

Dr. Jane has consolidated her control of the NRM in Lira City, emerging unopposed as the NRM party chairman. The party structure is fully behind her, unlike the UPC, where fierce factional infighting persists.

However, critics argue that Dr. Jane is a strict disciplinarian, intolerant of corruption, ineptitude, and incompetence. She rubs some people the wrong way, and they’ve come for their pound of flesh, alleging she’s a dictator who imposes her will without consultation.

Oh, and before I forget, there’s another Aceng in the race: Patricia Aceng, a former radio journalist turned politician. Largely unknown to voters but persistent like a hungry mosquito, Patricia is seen by some as a Trojan horse, running to act as a spoiler.

Her detractors point to the similarity between her campaign poster and Dr. Jane’s, alleging it’s designed to confuse voters. She vehemently denies these claims, threatening legal action against anyone calling her a paid third force meant to harm Dr. Jane’s campaign.

That leaves us with the curious cases of Lira City’s two constituencies: Lira City East and Lira City West. To say the least, they’re a boring affair. Lira City East, currently held by Jimmy Akena, is presumed to favor James Ocen, a healthcare tycoon affectionately nicknamed Agipi—if, and this is a big if, Akena doesn’t return to reclaim his seat when his presidential bid hits rocky waters.

Lira City West is largely called for the incumbent, Hon. Sedrick Obong Eyit, unless his popular political protégé, Awany Cingmalo, enters the fray. A former UPC youth winger who has decamped to Dr. Jane’s camp, Cingmalo could put Obong Eyit in a tight spot if he decides to run.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is the state of the political chessboard in Lira City. But if you’re a betting man, hold on to your money. In the coming weeks and months, the political combinations and permutations will likely shift, given the unpredictability of black swan events.

The writer watches political and social affairs in the Lango sub-region.