“We are in the hands of a man who is fatigued and old,” Byanyima said in a meeting with residents of Mbarara recently.
UNAIDS Executive Director Winnie Karagwa Byanyima has expressed the pressing need for Uganda to change leadership. Byanyima says President Yoweri Museveni’s advanced age continues to put the country in perilous uncertainty. She also fears that at the age of 79, the president is no longer in charge of national affairs and that the closest people around him are in effect governing the country.
UNAIDS boss Winnie Byanyima
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“The clueless people around him are the ones running the country. You see that he is getting weaker and surrounding himself only with people he knows best, especially family members.”
She added, “The country is not in safe hands. We feel pain but we are at a point as a nation where we have to have a change.”
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Winnie Byanyima
Pulse Ghana
Yet according to Byanyima, who formally served as a member of Parliament for Mbarara Municipality, Many Ugandans are fearful of a future without President Museveni.
But this, she says, should not be the case because it can hurt the country’s economic development when foreign investors are not sure of the country’s future stability.
“There is that fear of uncertainty where people don't know what lies ahead. In many countries people know what will happen in the next five years…but here we live in constant fear,” she said.
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“That is why we have fewer foreign investors coming here to open up businesses and give jobs to our children because they are not sure what will happen in the future.
“I have travelled to many countries and seen how they are changing. In Tanzania whenever I go back after a year I find the place completely changed with new structures and developments. That is because, in that country, change is certain and well planned.”
President Museveni, who will turn 79 in September has mostly avoided question on whether he will be seeking a seventh term in office, although powerful campaigns are underway to entice him to contest in the 2026 election.
