Ugandan Coup Alleged

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31001, 5 March 1966, Page 15

Ugandan Coup Alleged

(N.Z.P. A.-Reuter— Copyright) KAMAPALA, (Uganda) March 4. The Prime Minister of Uganda, Dr. Milton Obote, alleged last night that the country’s President, Sir Edward Mutesa, wanted to usurp his power. Dr. Obote said in a radio and television broadcast that the President had called on

foreign diplomats to send troops to Uganda. The coup had been planned while Dr. Obote was out of the country last month. The Prime Minister also alleged that the permanent secretary of the Katikiro (Premier) of Buganda, the largest of Uganda’s federal states, was now away seeking foreign troops to overthrow him. Last week Dr. Obote suspending Uganda’s constitution. On Wednesday he announced that he had assumed formal executive authority in the country, taking over the duties, powers and other functions formerly performed by the President. Sir Edward Mutesa, as Kabaka (King) of Buganda, has written two formal letters to Dr. Obote protesting at the suspension of the constitution.

The texts of these were released by a Buganda Government spokesman yesterday. In one letter, he said that he could not be a party to an illegal exercise. Every wrong step taken in Uganda added to the burden of people in the rest of Africa. “I should be failing in my duty if 1 left you in the slightest doubt that the people of this country would ever accept these, your own acquiesce in this insult to wrote.

“There are too many warnings elsewhere for anybody to think that our people can acquiesce in this insult of their intelligence.” A letter dated February 28

said the Prime Minister's act in detaining five Cabinet Ministers last week and the suspenson of the constitution had caused the President much anxiety as he was not previously informed, as required by the constitution.

The President was reported yesterday to have passed through Nairobi for an unknown destination. Dr. Obote recalled in his broadcast that the President had refused to sign a “lost counties referendum” Act and later after the referendum he had refused to sign an act to alter the boundaries between Buganda and Bunyoro.