Dan Kasirye turns down top New Vision job

Reports reaching Radio Katwe say that a Nairobi-based economist, Dan Kasirye, had been nominated by President Yoweri Museveni to replace William Pike as Managing Director of the New Vision Printing and Publishing Corporation, but he later turned down the job.

The sources say that in October 2005, Museveni instructed Brigadier Noble Mayombo to find a replacement for Pike, who State House felt was no longer towing the NRM agenda and was being too independent-minded.

Mayombo zeroed in on Kasirye who works for the International Finance Corporation, one of the international structures similar to the International Monetary Fund and part of the World Bank.

Kasirye was hesitant but left the door open to the idea of taking up the job. According to sources, when Colonel Kizza Besigye was arrested and Kampala descended into a military camp with Black Mambas surrounding the High Court, Kasirye then decided that he would not take up the job after all.

A week after he was appointed chairman of the New Vision's board, Mayombo had breakfast with Pike at the Sheraton Kampala Hotel.

Sources who sat at a distance and eavesdropped on the conversation said Mayombo was insisting that the New Vision is a government paper and should report the news more in favour of the government.

Pike firmly suggested that even if the New Vision was a government paper, it was now listed on the Uganda Securities Exchange and so was partly a public institution.

It therefore had to maintain the relative independence that has earned it respect as one of the rare government owned papers with some credibility in Africa.

The breakfast meeting ended with neither Mayombo nor Pike giving way to the other's viewpoint.