Is Museveni using Teddy Seezi Cheeye to purge the NRM?

For the second week in a row, the director of economic monitoring in the Internal Security Organisation, Teddy Seezi Cheeye, has come out attacking visible figures in the NRM.

He started last week by attacking the director of the NRM media center, Robert Kabushenga.

This week in an opinion piece titled "Mr President, rescuer yourself from Kutesa", Cheeye has come out attacking the powerful Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sam Kutesa, a man whom most people fear to say anything about, as he is viewed as one of the so called "mafia" ministers in Museveni's regime.

Cheeye wrote, "The defeat of Dr. Elly Muhumuza in Sembabule parliamentary elections despite the fact that Minister of Foreign Affairs Sam Kutesa fronted him proves that President Museveni is listening more to sycophants who have lost touch with the concrete realities on the ground. How could Kutesa mislead President Museveni into campaigning for Muhumuza instead of a more popular NRM supporter called Herman Sentongo, who defeated Muhumuza?"

The normal course has been for NRM leaders to heap their attacks on the FDC and other opposition parties.

But instead, Cheeye is coming out and using the government owned paper, the New Vision, to attack officials in the NRM who are close to the corridors of power.

Cheeye went on to say, "If the negative influence is not curbed now, it will lead to more costly mistakes. Until the recent Presidential elections, President Museveni was the uncontested hero of the rural population. But now because of misleading advice from the Kutesa type, the rural peasants are beginning to question Mr. Museveni's political guidance and advice. This is terrible."

As Radio Katwe argued in February, Museveni is more angry with his own inner circle that he is with the FDC. After the election, a purge was going to happen.

In the run-up to the presidential election, Radio Katwe reported that Museveni had given Cheeye 200 million shillings (about 102,000 dollars) to revive his Uganda Confidential newsletter and use it to attack the FDC candidate, Dr. Kizza Besigye.

Now Cheeye is turning his guns on to the NRM, using a government paper, probably safe in the knowledge that he can only attack these senior NRM people with the full and prior consent of Museveni himself.

Next, we might see Cheeye attacking Jim Muhwezi, Mike Mukula and others.

Could this be the kind of development which will cause deep suspicion within the NRM and prepare the ground for a palace coup like the one which ousted former President Milton Obote in 1985?