- CURRENTLY THE HEAD OF GASF IN SENEGAL, JPAM IS TIPPED TO HEAD THE AU COMMISSION FOUR 4YRS
John Patrick Amama Mbabazi, the former prime minister of Uganda continues to shine at the international scene. We have exclusively learnt that the now reformed former NRM secretary General may finally quit Ugandan administrative roles and permanently be stationed in Ethiopian capital-Addis Ababa where the African Union headquarters are stationed. This will however, depend on the decision of all East African member states, whose turn to produce a highly qualified individual to head the African Union Commission is knocking in a year from now!
The AU Commission is the secretariat of the African Union and runs the day to day affairs of the Union and is headquartered in Addis Ababa. It consists of the chairperson, deputy, eight commissioners and members of staff. The Assembly elects both the chair and deputy while the executive council [ministers of foreign affairs] elects the commissioners and that; they all serve for a four-year term renewable only once.
The AU commission chairperson according to the design of the AU rules is the CEO, legal representative of AU and Chief Finance Officer and he or she is directly responsible to the Executive council for the discharge of his or her duties.
Currently, Moussa Faki Mahamat from Chad [Central Africa] heads the commission and that according to inspectors, his term ends in 2025 when our former premier Mbabazi according to the calculation is supposed to set in if things work his way.
“Mbabazi is already warming up to the task. He wants this seat and has started lobbying. As a country, once Gen. Museveni endorses, full blast lobbying is going to start and we must get it” an inspector in state house said.
Mbabazi currently sits in the Senegalese Capital-Dhakar where he heads the Global African Security Foundation [GASF], an entity formed two years ago by African heads of state led by Gen. Museveni while in Senegal. Currently, the AUC rotational seat is being held by Central Africa and it is meant to come to the East African nations. Our inspectors said Mbabazi’s bid is likely to face a challenger from Rwanda.
“We want Mbabazi to take up the AU commission seat. The lobbying is already ongoing and the president is going to be briefed about to see if he’s okay with his candidature” says an inspector in state house.
WHO’S MBABAZI
In February 2022, Museveni pushed a reformed Mbabazi to Senegal as head of the Global Africa Security Foundation [GASF]. The appointment came shortly after the General from Rwakitura had deployed Mbabazi as his special envoy to South Sudan and Inter-Governmental Authority on Development [IGAD], an appointment that had excited his former allies in government who even started sending him congratulatory messages upon his South Sudan new role. This special envoy role came shortly after he met Museveni in Kisozi following years of icy relationship between the two former buddies especially when Mbabazi sought to dislodge Museveni in 2016 but failed.
However, inspectors said Mbabazi seemed not to have been satisfied with the South Sudan role. Those who sent him congratulatory messages, he allegedly responded that asking thus: ‘Congratulations for what?”
We later understood that Mbabazi who had just held a meeting with Museveni in Kisozi had expected a return to government with a bang possibly as Prime Minister but Mzee thought otherwise.
We are told even when he ‘reluctantly’ took up the Special Envoy/IGAD assignment, Mbabazi at first allegedly found a hard time accessing critical information from Museveni’s group in foreign service who kept treating him with ‘suspicion’ since he stood against Museveni in 2016. At the time, most Musevenists were allegedly skeptical sharing with Mbabazi since they didn’t know the level at which his reconciliation with his former boss Museveni was.
“Mbabazi stood against Mzee. The question was, was their reconciliation political or personal as it had been? Many contacts weren’t sure of this reconciliation and feared to fall in a trap” says an inspector adding that, as all this went on, Mbabazi kept reporting his hurdles in the field to the president who would respond by encouraging him to ‘push on’.
Museveni according to inspectors would also tell Mbabazi that he was going to answer him but he wasn’t committal on what exactly he was planning for the man from Kanungu.
Interestingly, when Mbabazi was posted to IGAD and South Sudan, we’re told his pals mostly former legislators bombarded him with job opportunity requests now that he was ‘in things’ but he kept quiet most of the time. It was only one time when he gained courage and opened up to one of the job seekers saying ‘you know our boss [Gen. Museveni] doesn’t want to talk much [about his plans]’
Inspectors said this level of cageyness on the side of Jjajja Yoweri allegedly left the former super minister guessing, spending much of his time on his phone waiting for a ‘very important’ phone call from State House.
A wind of fortune finally blew his way when he got news that he would be part of the team to accompany Gen. Museveni to Dakar. It is here that Museveni alongside other African presidents founded the GASF and Mbabazi was appointed its head. We’re told when he was posted here, his appointment brought confidence to Musevenists in Foreign Service who now started to fully embrace JPAM.
MBABAZI ALREADY PLAYING A ROLE IN UKRAINE-RUSSIA WAR SETTLEMENT
Our inspectors said that the recent visit to Moscow by Foreign Affairs minister Gen. Abubakar Odong Jeje where he met with Russian foreign minister Lavrov was the work and effort of Mbabazi. Apparently, Mbabazi has been trotting the globe marketing Uganda’s position of non-alignment in the Ukraine-Russia conflict. In addition, with the championship of South African president Cyril Rwamaphosa, Africa has already talked to both President Vladmir Putin and Zelensky on the possibility of deploying an African peacekeeping force in Ukraine as one way to end the conflict peacefully. Cyril was recently reported to have said that the idea has been welcomed by both presidents and is also allegedly backed by most African states. He said so far, three states including South Africa, Uganda and Senegal were ready to participate in the peace keeping mission, meaning UPDF would deploy in Ukraine if the move is approved. Efforts to get a comment from Mbabazi were futile by press time.
