Hon. Bobi Wine, MP. Photo-Facebook
Crushing the ruling party’s candidate, Ugandan reggae superstar Bobi Wine has been elected to Parliament in a landslide victory to represent the Kyaddondo East constituency, in a by-election. Mr. Wine, whose given name is Robert Kyagulanyi won over 25, 659 votes. The candidate of the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) of the country’s dictator of 31 years won over 4,556 and the candidate for the main opposition party the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) won nearly 1,832. Last year when most musicians were coerced to perform in support for Gen. Museveni as ran for the country’s sham elections, Mr. Wine, 35 years old, rejected the pressure to do so and his stock has since soared. This is his first attempt at politics. Mr. Wine, who grew up in the slums of Kampala is popularly referred to as “Ghetto President.”
Hon. Wine, MP, made the following comments to assembled media shortly after his victory was declared:
“This is not my victory. It is the people’s victory. It is not about me, it is about the ideas that I represent. This is so evident of people power. It is the exultation of the voice of the common people.
The very first this that I want to do is to reconcile the people of Kyaddondo East through reconciling the leaders. As you know no matter how calm and peaceful an election is there is always some division and I feel it’s necessary for us to come together, to bring our people together through the leadership. I’m glad that I have a good relationship with most leaders, but even those leaders who were not on my side, I hereby call upon them to realize that now that the divisions of elections are over and it is time for us to work together to bring the positive change that our people so badly need.
I’m a talented musician. Music has always been a tool, a vehicle for me to transport messages far and wide. Music is a universal language. Music has always brought us together. So I want politics to bring us together. I want to do the same to politics. But music will still be a strong tool that I will use to communicate everything that I want to communicate to the people.“
Responding to a question about entertainers as lawmakers possibly diluting the quality of Parliament:
“There is something called stereotype. For long there has been that stereotype. But probably that’s why God raises people like me to prove certain negative perceptions wrong. I was born in the ghetto. I went to school. I graduated from Makerere University but I was not employed.
It is music that brought me to your screens, brought me to your sitting rooms, brought me to your souls. It is music that has communicated most of the things that I wanted to communicate. So to me, music is a blessing and it is music that is going to bring us together and it is music that we are going to employ many times. Like Bob Marley said, we handle things in a rub-a-dub style.”
