The former Bukoto South MP, Muyanja Mbabaali (pictured), who is also a businessman could soon run bankrupt as money lenders move to attach his properties to recover their money.
Mbabaali, a strong NRM cadre has been given a 30-day ultimatum to pay up all his debts or risk losing five of his properties spread across Kampala, Masaka and Mpigi districts.
In a notice published in Daily Monitor yesterday to MFK Corporation Limited, to which Mbabaali is a proprietor, the client who isn’t named instructed MMAKS Advocates to warn Mbabaali of the impending move to sell off five of his properties in order to recover the monies he borrowed.
“The registered mortgage we shall proceed to sale the under mentioned properties also pictured below by public auction or private treaty after expiry of 30days from date of this notice is thereafter unless the debtor pays all monies owed to our client plus our fees and costs incurred in the process,” the notice read.
The properties are located in Mawokota Mpigi sitting on 2.153 heactares, another flat is located in Masaka Municipality, another one in Kyadondo, Kampala. There are two properties located in Ntind and Kisugu and all are flats.
The notice also called on all occupants to vacate premises within fourteen days from date of notice.
Although the notice makes no mention of what Mbabali used the loan for, cases of MPs losing property after losing elections in Uganda are rife because of uncontrolled expenditure by candidates. Mbabali lost his Parliamentary seat to Tagoba Twaha of the National Unity Platform.
He had earlier lost the NRM Primaries to Abdul Kiyimba.
Ahead of the January 2021 general elections, the Alliance for Finance Monitoring (ACFIM) a civil society group revealed that the cost of financing election campaigns would rise exponentially as has been the case since 2006 when Uganda returned to multiparty political dispensation.
In the October 2020 study ACFIM estimated that contestants for presidential seats would spend around Shs1Trn, Parliamentary contestants would spend in the ranges of Shs500million to Shs1billion, while candidates for District LCV Chairperson were estimated to spend Shs300 million to Shs500 million-yet these figure are exclusive of what candidates would spend in party primaries.
ACFIM in the 2021 Preliminary Report- Who Won The Campaign Spending War In November And December 2020? ;Interrogating the influence of money on the outcome of elections highlighted that at parliamentary level, money determined the winner of the directly constituency Member of Parliament elections in 56% of the constituencies ACFIM monitored.
However, in 44% of the cases, money did not work as there were other structural factors that influenced electoral outcomes. ACFIM monitoring scope covered 29 districts spread out in 14 sub-regions of Uganda.
Across the geographical regions, whereas campaign spending largely influenced electoral outcomes by determining the winners of elections in Eastern, Northern and Western regions of Uganda, in central region the where Mbabaali contested, the reverse was true.
