Why Does Museveni Bother To Campaign

Driving through the eastern Ugandan districts of Mbale, Budaka, Pallisa, Namutumba, etc, this week, one encountered hordes of yellow-draped campaign convoys complete with public address systems and paraphernalia.

Between Mbale town and Iganga, in just a few hours, you could easily see at least four such convoys that include many government vehicles mostly bearing registration letter 'C', which is for the presidency. There were also army trucks carrying soldiers to boot.

One finds that many of these convoys are without the incumbent presidential candidate, General Yoweri Museveni, meaning they are advance teams mobilizing and ferrying locals to the rallies our great ruler is scheduled to address. One can only imagine the extent of waste, in public resources, that go into Museveni's rather gratuitous campaigns.

The campaigns are done aggressively and opulently. They entail ad nauseam platitudes like "I and the NRM brought peace and security to Uganda".

On the campaign trail, the Ssabalwanyi takes time to explain to Ugandans, using the most paternalistic language that easily beats what the colonists employed, the achievements of his government for which he alone takes credit; but also the failings, for which technocrats and opposition politicians must take blame.

Campaign time is also to make snide remarks about opposition MPs and take a swipe at RDCs for failure to supervise government programmes. But should Museveni be going around the country canvassing votes, anyway? It is difficult to see the rationale. Here is why.

He is on record for saying that Ugandans are not mad as to vote for his opponents who, at any rate, are such an unserious lot. It has also been stated by Museveni functionaries that he hunted his animal and cannot be expected to leave power via a mere piece of paper - the ballot. What's more, everybody else aspiring to lead the country is perforce a liar and only Museveni knows what the country needs and where it wants to go.

This exaggerated self-glorification and somewhat illusory messianic attitude clearly contradicts the desperate combing of the country in search of votes, including the use of unsolicited robocalls. The latter is done of course with the dubious collusion of telecom companies and in utter violation of the right not to receive unsolicited messages, moreover of such a political nature.

Museveni's attitude is such that we cannot have a meaningful contest for the nation's topmost job where the outcome would be generally acceptable to all players, even though some may feel dissatisfied. The only outcome must be that which certifies his continued grip on power. Nothing else. This, to my understanding, was the gist of Professor Oloka-Onyango's rather misconstrued comments that appeared in the Sunday Monitor, December 13.

Why then does our self-assured 'messiah' waste his time going around the country looking for votes when, in the final analysis, the outcome must necessarily go his way? Authoritarian rulers rule with a measure of insecurity and uncertainty. They tend to be unsure about the mood of the people and the level of their popularity.

Campaign time, therefore, offers a window to be gratified with the feeling of love from the people - in the sense of the vintage colonial chief. The need to seek out the people and receive their expression of affection is partly fueled by an army of schemers and hangers-on looking to cash in from the election campaign booty.

The schemers and political merchants work around to raise rented crowds for the ssabagabe using as small a fraction of availed funds as possible so they can make off with as much as they can hold onto. In so doing, they engage in duplicity and outright fraud, sometimes working hard to outdo one another and occupy the front row of the ruler's singing choir.

Apparently, as one very senior government official told me last weekend, our ruler has become deeply hostage to these strings of parasitic merchants who employ both blackmail and deception to extort money and other material returns from the master.

With streams of intelligence and counter-intelligence, quite a bit of it cooked up and embellished, the ruler is conflicted between his self-assured messianic place among the people he rules and the possibility that he could be pushed out of power.

Thus, he acquiesces campaigning to win votes at the same time that he ridicules the very principles of free political contest and tells all and sundry that it must be him to be announced winner of the February 18 polls.

To you, dear reader, I must confess: writing about Ugandan politics, it is increasingly inevitable to end up sounding facetious. Yet there is a profound tragedy that our country faces, wrought by the regressive politics of machination and personal rule at the behest of General Museveni. Sadly, quite many of our compatriots remain either indifferent or ignorant about the scope of the tragedy that continues to stare at us.

Our politics are getting dangerously broken, with grave ramifications for all other realms of our country. The orgies of campaign violence as we saw in Ntungamo at the weekend just add insult to injury in a country in urgent need of fresh leadership and a new agenda for transformation.

Uganda Election Marred By Arrests, Harassment and Torture of Opposition

Ugandan police have arbitrarily arrested political opposition leaders, used tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse peaceful demonstrations and tortured opposition supporters, a new Amnesty International report published today has found.

The report, based on 88 interviews including senior police officers and torture victims, documents how the Ugandan police are selectively applying national laws governing freedom of assembly to unfairly target the political opposition, activists and other individuals aligned with them. This is preventing Ugandans from receiving information and engaging with politicians in the run-up to elections scheduled for 18 February 2016.

Muthoni Wanyaki, Amnesty International's Regional Director for East Africa said:

"All Ugandans must be free to attend political rallies and engage with candidates, regardless of their political affiliations.

"The Ugandan authorities must put an immediate end to the harassment and torture of political opponents and urgently, thoroughly and transparently investigate the use of excessive force against peaceful demonstrators. Anyone found responsible for these violations must be brought to justice."

Amnesty is calling on the Ugandan government to allow all its citizens to engage in political rallies, listen to candidates, and freely express their views, regardless of their political affiliation.

Amnesty also urges the Government of Uganda to issue guidelines on policing assemblies that comply with international standards.

Arrest of opposition Presidential candidates

On 9 July two leading political opposition presidential candidates - Kizza Besigye and former Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi - were put under "preventive arrest." Although they were released on the same day, their arrests prevented them from holding planned consultations with voters.

At the time of their arrests, they were in talks with other political leaders to form an umbrella group known as The Democratic Alliance (TDA) under which they planned to field one joint candidate to face President Yoweri Museveni at the polls.

Use of torture

Six days later, Vincent Kaggwa, the spokesman for a group allied to Amama Mbabazi, was arrested in Kampala, and held incommunicado for four days. The police refused to disclose his whereabouts to his wife for the duration of his detention. When he was eventually released, he said police had ordered him to undress and sprayed him with high-pressure cold water from a hose pipe directed at his lower abdomen, causing him intense pain. Amnesty considers that Vincent Kaggwa was subjected to enforced disappearance and torture.

Amama Mbabazi's head of security, Christopher Aine, was arrested in Kampala on 14 September. He claims to have been hit with iron bars and canes while in detention. When Amnesty interviewed him on the day after his release, his body was covered in cuts and bruises and showed evidence of torture.

Tear gas and rubber bullets fired into peaceful gatherings

The police have frequently used excessive force to break up political gatherings organised by political opposition parties. A video obtained by Amnesty shows police hurling tear gas canisters and indiscriminately firing rubber bullets into a peaceful crowd in the town of Soroti.

To justify their abusive activities, the police cite the Public Order Management Act, a controversial law that imposes wide-ranging restrictions on public meetings, including the requirement that organisers notify the police in advance.

Under international law, the right to freedom of assembly states that authorities should not use excessive force to break up peaceful assemblies even if they consider them to be unlawful.

Muthoni Wanyeki said:

"The authorities must take action to rein in the police in the run up to the elections and ensure that their actions conform to both national and international standards."

Why Museveni Sacked Me - Amama

A year after he was sacked as prime minister, Amama Mbabazi, an independent presidential candidate, has started opening up about struggles with President Museveni that led to his dismissal.

Speaking at White Horse Inn in Kabale on Friday, Mbabazi claimed that the government reforms he was trying to push through as prime minister rubbed Museveni the wrong way.

The Kinkiizi West MP was named prime minister, his highest posting in government, in 2011, but was sacked two and half years later, in September 2014.

"Because of what I was doing in government for the purpose of changing government [systems] so that we become more effective in service delivery, it was misunderstood to be preparing ground for launching a campaign," Mbabazi said.

The former premier carefully avoided going into specifics about his reforms that got him into trouble with his erstwhile ally despite prodding from this writer.

But in 2013, we reported about a cabinet disagreement that resulted from Mbabazi's proposals to rearrange the management of government.

According to that report, Mbabazi had, in a cabinet meeting, suggested sweeping proposals that he said would improve service delivery. For instance, he suggested that resident district commissioners (RDCs) be removed from the Office of the President to the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM); but his cabinet colleagues feared Mbabazi wanted to undermine the president and create a parallel government.

Although Mbabazi explained that his proposals were aimed at making supervision and monitoring of programmes by the OPM easier, many Museveni-leaning ministers couldn't buy it.

Mbabazi had also proposed the creation of the position of deputy head of Public Service under the OPM, to enable him to keep tabs on all government employees.

Now Mbabazi says his proposals created unease within the presidency, and soon President Museveni began looking at him as a rival who wanted to snatch the presidency from him.

This created tension in cabinet and the NRM caucus and Museveni loyalists began plotting the former NRM secretary general's removal. It led to the NRM MPs adopting a resolution at Kyankwanzi that Museveni should be the party's sole candidate, effectively locking out other likely presidential candidate within NRM.

"It was obvious, [the] Kyankwanzi [resolution] had a reason, because some people suspected that I wanted to vie for the presidency, which wasn't the case," Mbabazi said.

"It [the Kyankwanzi resolution] was not out of the blue; there was a cause, and the cause was by those who were uncomfortable with the presumed so-called ambitions that I had," he said.

The sole candidate resolution was passed by NRM MPs during their February 2014 caucus retreat at the National Leadership Institute (NALI) Kyankwanzi to cushion Museveni against any internal challenge.

Mbabazi was eventually sacked as prime minister and later ousted as secretary general of the ruling party at a special delegates' conference last December. In the Friday interview, Mbabazi declined to discuss his sacking in detail, saying he was still bound by the Official Secrets Act. But he hinted at sharp disagreements in cabinet.

"Serving in government doesn't mean that you totally agree with everything but the rule is that on the outside you must appear as one," Mbabazi said.

He dismissed as false, any suggestion that he turned critical of Museveni's policies after his September 18, 2014 sacking as PM. At a separate press conference on December 12 at the White Horse Inn, Kabale, Mbabazi discussed his predicament a little more.

Asked why he was sacked as prime minister, Mbabazi promised that sometime in future he would come up with details of his proposed reforms in government that got him in trouble.

"When I was appointed prime minister, I came with a lot of vigor and fire and suggested reforms to improve government that unfortunately didn't see the light of day," he said.

Asked why he is now collecting NRM cards from defectors yet he is keeping his own, Mbabazi said there are two NRMs: the original NRM to which he belongs, and the NRM of those who have veered off track.

He said there's no contradiction in him collecting the cards. The NRM cards, he said, are safer in his hands. He also wondered why Norbert Mao, the Democratic Party president, a former Gulu municipality MP and district chairman could be denied a chance to be registered afresh as a voter.