On Monday September 30, during the 9 O’clock news, NBS Television ran a story alleging that some NRM officials including the Deputy SG Hon Richard Todwong, Deputy NT Hon Dr. Kenneth Omona and myself were denied American visas.
This is a fabricated story whose authors only seem to have a hidden agenda of defaming the party officials.
I spoke to NBS over this story and even offered myself for an interview in Gulu but to my surprise, they insisted running the false information in their interest. This tempts me to think that someone could be used or facilitated by our political opponents or selfish individuals to defame the party officials.
Never denied visas:
Its true we had paraded a delegation to travel to Chicago for the UNAA Conference that was held towards the end of August this year.
We however started the application process late and by the time we completed filling the electronic forms and paying the bank dues, the nearest available dates for interviews were in October. I was personally allocated Oct 8th. All the near dates had been booked already. Its an American arrangement that every person applying for their visas has to interface with the Embassy officials. Remember that the event in Chicago was running between August 28-Sept 3 .
We opted for cancellation:
Our next option therefore was to cancel the applications because it would have been useless presenting ourselves for the interviews for a UNAA Convention that had already taken place.
It is therefore wrong for NBS to insist running the wrong story that completely never happened. We were not denied visas but we even never reached the stage where visas are granted or denied. This fact can even be cross checked from the American Embassy
I still insist that both the reporter and the editor seem to have had a hidden motive in prioritising such a non existing and defamatory story.
Our future plans:
Having learnt from this year’s experience, we shall apply early enough next year in order to attend the 2020 UNAA Conference in California.
Please note that our failure to attend this year’s event is not in anyway blamed on the US Embassy but on our late submission of the electronic application forms.
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Mr. Rogers Mulindwa is the Spokesperson, NRM
