Insight. Last Thursday, our correspondent called a source for an interview. The response from the source was punchy. Excerpts:-
Question: What is President Museveni’s game plan for 2016?
Answer: Museveni has one game plan now, he had two at first. He had to rig the election, which is already done. He even knows the percentage. That is how it is done; two, three years earlier. So, he dominates the State institutions to deliver him victory, creates artificial constituencies, beats up people, ring-fences for himself position so that he becomes the sole candidate, creates a fraudulent voter register and controls the media. The whole infrastructure of the State has already been swung to deliver him victory. That is how it has been done over the years.
The source on the other line was Gen. David Sejusa, the former coordinator of intelligence services. After a pause, Sejusa, who has dared his Commander-In-Chief to arrest him, added, “Museveni is now in post-election period; all these fellows engaged in electioneering are wasting time...”
Sejusa remains a puzzle. To work with him or to distance yourself from him, is the question for Opposition parties. For the ordinary Ugandan watching political developments, it is a question of whether to listen to and trust him or not. But all that notwithstanding, Sejusa offers some insight into the election ahead from an insider’s viewpoint.
Kizza Besigye said last week while campaigning for the Forum for Democratic Change flag bearer slot that Sejusa has a detailed understanding of the system. When he speaks, therefore, it is probably foolhardy to write him off.
From that brief interview alone, for instance, we can then start to plot Museveni’s graph. We can look at the 2001 and 2006 elections, which the Supreme Court in the Kizza Besigye Vs Yoweri Museveni and the Electoral Commission petition, held were fraught with violence and irregularities, albeit not substantial enough to affect the outcome of the election. And also look at the 2011 election, where money rained heavily across the country with Bank of Uganda Governor Tumusiime Mutebile admitting that unscrupulous expenditure at the time plunged the country into run-away inflation.
So, which route will the President choose to take?
“2016 seems to be a repeat of 2011 on a grand scale. We have 250,000 LCI villages, which are already receiving money. My village recently got Shs25 million. You heard of the village in Tororo where people complained that money didn’t reach,” opines former Leader of the Opposition in Parliament, Prof. Ogenga Latigo.
Violence, the senior politician says, “cannot be sustained with the Erias Lukwago’s planning to counter Kakooza Mutale’s squad. He is also incapable of using the army, which is bruised in Somalia. You can’t be dying in Somalia and accept to be used to brutalise fellow citizens. Besigye was in the north, police tried to stop him and the population intervened.”
The 2001 and 2006 campaigns saw an outbreak of targeted violence designed to cow regime opponents. From security officers hijacking the election process in some polling stations, maiming supporters of Opposition candidates, to torture. That dented Museveni’s human rights credentials with international human rights groups like Human Rights Watch writing reports that presented a doomsday scenario of Uganda.
The worry for Museveni would likely be that he came close to losing the 2006 election; first at the ballot, and secondly at the Supreme Court, where in a thin margin of 4:3 the justices of the country’s last appellate court, came close to annulling the election. The violence that marred those elections, among other pieces of cogent evidence admitted in court, offered quite a good case for Besigye, who has since justified his persistent struggle with argument that his victory was stolen.
Does Museveni want another near loss in court? Can he lean on the judges as is alleged to have happened in 2006, according to then Supreme Court justice Prof. George Kanyeihamba’s revelations?
To indulge in violence can be counter-productive.
But as we write this, Maj. Kakooza Mutale, whose Kalangala Action Plan unleashed terror on the population in 2001, is publicly training militias in the bushes of Luweero ostensibly in preparation to crush any resistance against the President. On the other hand, criticism continues to mount on police chief Kale Kayihura for the massive recruitment of the so-called crime preventers, largely seen as another militia-in-waiting.
Uganda Peoples Congress veteran politician Yona Kanyomozi says: “He (Museveni) will put a lot more effort in the West because if he loses the western region, he loses the whole thing. There will be violence, money and intimidation.”
Kanyomozi predicts, “He will also try to persuade people like Amanya Mushega to cross, appoint him say minister of East African Community Affairs, not that Mushega adds anything to him.”
A member of the Opposition FDC, Mushega, has recently startled observers with a bare knuckles attack against Besigye, criticising him for going against his word on not contesting for the presidency with Museveni still in the picture. Anyone can read anything into this.
Contrary to the notion that he stayed off violence in 2011 and used money instead, Kanyomozi argues, “Actually he used both violence and money. In Ntungamo, Augustine Ruzindana faced the wrath of the State.” Because he cannot bank his trust on Buganda as a voting bloc, Kanyomozi says, Museveni will focus more on the west where he could lose some support to former prime minister Amama Mbabazi, a man who despite being run out of the ruling party, remains a subject of particular interest in those very quarters.
What then does the President have up his sleeves?
The NRM deputy secretary general Richard Todwong is alive to the reality of what Mr Mbabazi has called a tired nation. With one of the world’s youngest populations, the unemployment rate among the youth is choking at a staggering 83 per cent. Todwong says the task for Museveni’s handlers is to coin a message of hope for this large constituency.
