How Museveni’s spy ended up in Besigye’s camp

In 1984, when Dr Kizza Besigye was in his second year as an active member of the National Resistance Army (NRA) rebel group, David Pulkol completed his bachelor’s degree in social works and social administration at Makerere University in Kampala.

At the time, Dr Milton Obote was the president of Uganda and also chancellor of Makerere University.

The vice-chancellor was Asavia Wandira In light of Pulkol’s good academic performance, Makerere retained him as a teaching assistant. Not long after, he obtained a scholarship for a master’s degree in economics at the prestigious London School of Economics in the UK. And when he finished his master’s degree, he returned to Uganda in 1986, the very year the NRA captured state power. In the new regime, Yoweri Museveni became the president, while Besigye became the minister of state for internal affairs.

In the cabinet reshuffle, which Museveni carried out in the following year (1987), he appointed Pulkol as the deputy minister for water and mineral development.

At the same time, he named Besigye as the minister in the office of the president, with the additional position of national political commissioner. Later in the 1990s, when Besigye was serving as the commandant of the NRA mechanised regiment in Masaka, Pulkol was the deputy minister of education.

Following his re-election in 1996, Museveni appointed Pulkol as the director general of External Security Organisation (ESO). At the time, Besigye was the chief of logistics and engineering of Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF), a position he was appointed to in 1993.

In 1998, Pulkol was dropped from the leadership of ESO. In the same year, Besigye was named adviser to the ministry of defence, whose overseer was Gen. Salim Saleh, before Steven Kavuma was named minister of state for defence.

Upon exiting ESO, Pulkol obtained a job with UN agency, UNICEF. And while he (Pulkol) was still working at UNICEF, Besigye proclaimed that he would contest for presidency in 2001. In a dramatic turn of events, Pulkol resigned from UNICEF and returned home to campaign for Museveni against Besigye. Indeed, he mobilised in his home area of Karamoja and the eastern parts of Uganda.

In mid February 2001, for example, Pulkol and the then MP for Bubulo west, Wanjusi Wasieba, were funded by the younger brother of President Museveni, Saleh, at Mbale state lodge. They also discussed with Saleh the management of the 250 agents of candidate Besigye that had defected to Museveni’s camp.

Indeed, Pulkol quipped: “Those were the people who had gone to campaign for Besigye to eat.”

Pulkol then led the aforesaid defectors in a procession in Mbale town. And on the following day, Pulkol addressed a pro-Museveni rally at Bufumbo, Mbale. In his address, the wordsmith Pulkol bragged: “During our procession in Mbale on Monday, we turned the town up-side down and sideways.

There is no stopping. All over Uganda, the Museveni taskforce has come up to push away intimidation.”

It was also Pulkol who coined Museveni’s campaign slogan of ‘No Change’. He would chorus: “No change, why change? No cause.”

Regains ESO job

After the re-election of Museveni in 2001, he appointed Pulkol on a two-year contract as the director general of ESO. At the time, the acting chief of military intelligence alias CMI was Lt. Col. Noble Mayombo and the head of Internal Security Organisation (ISO) was Brig. Henry Tumukunde.

Pulkol and Mayombo incessantly accused Besigye of being involved in subversive activities against the state of Uganda. They first linked him to March 2001 city bombs.

And later, when Besigye fled into exile, they accused him of being the leader of the rebel group, People’s Redemption Army (PRA), based in DR Congo. For instance, Pulkol once claimed that Besigye had James Opoka develop a joint collaboration between the PRA with the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels, led by Joseph Kony. Pulkol added that Kony rejected Besigye’s proposal.

Pulkol made the claim while speaking at a workshop on the Kony insurgency in northern Uganda at Hotel Africana in Kampala in November 2002.

He further claimed: “Kony is saying Opoka should join and train as an LRA fighter. Kony says he cannot fight for Besigye, another Munyakore.” (The writer’s clarification: Besigye is a Mukiga Muhororo not Munyakore).

Then in December 2002, Pulkol publicly warned Besigye against pursuing war. He said: “It is not too late for the colonel to seek the path of peace. He should not force himself to the edge of the cliff.”

Pulkol sounded the warning during a two-day symposium on peace, conflict management and resolution at Parliament Building in Kampala. It was organised by Parliament’s Committee on Legal and Parliamentary Affairs and that of Defence and Internal Affairs, with support from the European Union and the office of Parliamentary and Professional Development.

Pulkol of ESO worked cordially with Mayombo of CMI, but Pulkol had issues with Tumukunde of ISO. In the case of Pulkol and Tumukunde, there were tensions during inter-agency meetings. And in one of those meetings, a pistol had to be grabbed from one of the security chiefs for the safety of the other.

Within the leadership of ESO, Pulkol was on war path with some of the directors he accused of undermining him for the interests of Tumukunde and others. Among the accused was ESO’s director of defence, Maku-Iga. That’s why in November 2003, Pulkol replaced Maku-Iga at ESO.

Aware of those conflicts, Museveni refused to renew the contract of Pulkol in the following month (December 2003). To Pulkol’s fright, Museveni appointed Maku-Iga as the new director general of ESO. The elusive Robert Masolo was named as Maku-Iga’s deputy.

It was announced that Pulkol was moved to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, pending further deployment. And when Pulkol was posted to Uganda’s High Commission in London, he proudly declined the offer.

Joins Besigye, leaves

In the meantime, Pulkol accused Museveni of stooping low as far as issues of governance and constitutionalism are concerned.

His criticism was at the time when Museveni’s devotees, such as Mary Karooro Okurut were demanding for the scrapping of presidential term limits of two-terms of five years each from the Constitution.

This was aimed at enabling Museveni seek another term in 2006.

In his sustained verbal attacks against Museveni, Pulkol associated with the Parliamentary Advocacy Forum (PAFO). In May 2004, for example, Pulkol addressed the PAFO workshop at Mbarara Catholic Social Centre and declared that Museveni’s time in power was over.

He said: “The time has come for him (Museveni) to go because the Constitution says so. We should remind President Museveni that the supreme law says “this is your last term.”

He added: “The day President Museveni decided to run for a second term (in 2001); he lost the right to run for a third, fourth, fifth, tenth or nth term. You may like it, you may not like it, but the time has come. Let us not manipulate the Constitution.”

Pulkol made those comments while discussing a paper presented by Eriya Kategaya.

Kategaya had told the workshop: “In my naïve thinking, I thought Museveni would leave a stature of a statesman and set a procedural example. I think that this should be for the stability of the country. The longer one stays in power, the more one gets insulated from reality.”

Pulkol’s criticism of Museveni was welcomed by Besigye’s camp, especially Beti Kamya. And when PAFO members resolved on merging PAFO with Besigye’s pressure group, Reform Agenda, to form Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), Pulkol was one of the FDC promoters. The interim leader of PAFO was Besigye, who was then in exile in South Africa.

Within months, some FDC members like Sam Njuba and the tabloid media expressed fears that Pulkol was spying on Besigye/FDC for Museveni.

This was dismissed by Kamya in the November 2004 statement, stating: “We wish to formally clarify that contrary to sensational news headlines in the media last week, Mr David Pulkol is a bona fide member of FDC…We trust Pulkol because he is a principled man. He cannot be in FDC as a spy.”

Fifteen months after Kamya had issued the statement, Pulkol resurfaced at Museveni’s campaign rallies in Karamoja in 2006. With time, Kamya also abandoned FDC/ Besigye for Museveni’s NRM.

The writer/researcher wrote a book, President Idi Amin: A narrative of his rule (1971- 1979). It costs sh100,000 at Uganda Bookshop, Kampala.