Edward Kiwanuka Ssekandi , New Ugandan Vice President

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni named ruling party loyalists as vice president and prime minister, indicating there may be few concessions to a growing protest movement. 

Former parliamentary speaker Edward Kiwanuka Ssekandi will be vice president, while ex-security minister Amama Mbabazi becomes prime minister, Ofwono Opondo, deputy spokesman of the ruling party, said by phone today from the capital, Kampala.


Museveni said Mbabazi was “one of the most ideologically reliable” of the National Resistance Movement’s members, while Ssekandi “is a clean, trustworthy and consistent person,” according to an e-mailed statement from the presidency.

Uganda has seen a wave of protests against rising prices in the last two months, with the security forces repeatedly arresting opposition leader Kizza Besigye. After winning elections on Feb. 18, Museveni said at his inauguration on May 12 that he would defeat “disruptive schemes.”
“Ssekandi has been very rigid as speaker, while serving the interest of the NRM party, while Mbabazi has been loyal to Museveni since the 1970s,” Yusuf Msibambi, a Kampala-based attorney, said by phone today. “They will stifle progressive ideas.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Fred Ojambo in Kampala at fojambo@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor on this story: Paul Richardson at pmrichardson@bloomberg.net.