Israel Star Chronicle

Former spy chief David Pulkol finds himself without a political home yet again, after Uganda People’s Congress President Olara Otunnu fired him from his post of secretary for policy and national mobilization.

In a move Otunnu says is intended to strengthen the party, Pulkol was sacked alongside UPC secretary general John Odit. Otunnu has also since dismissed the party’s national chairman, Maj Edward Rurangaranga, the deputy publicist Moses Nuwagaba and press secretary Robert Kanusu, after they publicly challenged his decision to sack Pulkol and Odit.

Publicly, Otunnu says the changes are in the party’s interest, but deep inside, he is frustrated. Party insiders say he has, on several occasions, alleged during meetings that the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) and President Museveni have infiltrated UPC, and has particularly implicated Pulkol.

Yet such allegations against Pulkol are not new. In the past, this former director general of the External Security Organisation (ESO) has been suspected of being a government mole in the opposition. His nomadic nature has not helped matters.
Nomadic Pulkol

This is the fourth time Pulkol finds himself politically homeless in less than a decade. In the last eight years, he has subscribed to four political parties: NRM, Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), the Progressive Alliance Party (PAP) linked to Brig Henry Tumukunde and UPC. Pulkol’s membership to each of these parties hardly exceeds two years. When he fell out with the NRM after being dropped as ESO chief in 2003, he joined opposition politicians to form FDC and was one of its promoters.

He is one of the people that proposed the name FDC and played a key role in popularizing the budding party throughout the country. Pulkol, however, fell out with FDC during the selection of its leaders in 2005. He was the only FDC official who opposed the choice of Dr Kizza Besigye to head the party. At the time, Pulkol preferred Maj Gen Mugisha Muntu, although it was the latter that seconded Besigye and moved that nominations be closed.

At the time, some political observers attributed Pulkol’s opposition to Besigye to his earlier statement on radio, while appearing with then head of the Chieftaincy of Military Intelligence, Brig Noble Mayombo (RIP), he accused the FDC leader of plotting to overthrow the government. Pundits said Pulkol found it difficult to market a person he had publicly discredited and linked to treason.