Opinion
By Evarist Kagaruki
WHEN Ugandan President Yoweri Kaguta Museveni seized power in 1986, after five years of guerrilla war, he banned party politics and reintroduced political activity without parties. He took his own “Resistance Committees” as a basis for political organization under the “Movement” (non-party) system.
He blamed multi-partyism for dividing the Ugandan society along ethnic lines and plunging the country into chaos and bloodshed. He argued that the crucial questions facing Uganda at the time were not about one-party or multi-party politics; rather, he said, they were about what economic and political system could best serve the need and aspirations of the people of Uganda. Although most Ugandans were opposed to a one-party system, they wanted Museveni’s movement arrangement to continue for “sometime” to allow old political wounds to heal.
Museveni, when he came to office, inherited a fractured and ruined country that was still bleeding from the old and the fresh wounds inflicted by many years of brutal dictatorship and bloodletting. It is for this reason that many political pundits reasoned that Museveni was perhaps right in his no-party system approach. And, to be sincere, he was, because in no time, the system restored peace and stability in a country severely destroyed by bloody violence underwritten, as it were, by sectarian politics and the rule of the gun.
Moreover, under Museveni, Ugandans have seen their economy grow remarkably by African standards (in macro-economic terms) over the years. His government also managed to launch and sustain a successful campaign against the HIV/Aids scourge in the country. By the mid-1990s, Museveni had reached levels where many third world nations, proud of his accomplishments, would look to him for solutions!
In the early years of his leadership, Museveni swallowed the policies of the IMF and the World Bank hook, line and sinker. And overtime he became the darling of the donor community who tolerated his movement system to safeguard their own interests. Uganda was cited by its benefactors as the “economic model” for the rest of the African continent.
However, Museveni’s integrity was besieged by two inherent problems which became manifest as years wore on. One was his rapacious ambition for power. And the other was his aversion to multi-party democracy. These shortcomings tended to erode all his grand achievements (especially on the economic front) and make him lose the respect the world community once accorded him as a “visionary” and “statesman”.
He came out in his true colours as a dictator when he started changing the Constitution, scrapping the presidential term limit and allowing himself the privilege of staying in power indefinitely like a monarch! Now there is no doubt that quintessential Museveni wants to be life president. On January 14, the National Executive Committee of his party, the National Resistance Movement, nominated him as the party’s flag bearer in the 2011 presidential elections.
The endorsement follows his nomination by the party’s Central Executive Committee last year. Now he is waiting for the NRM Delegates Conference to rubber-stamp his single candidature. With the incumbency factor obviously coming into play during the poll, and with the election destined to be overseen by an electoral commission hand-picked by the president, opposition political parties are already beaten, as no one could challenge him under such circumstances.
Museveni, who has been in office for 24 years, will continue to lock everyone else out of power until he decides to step down (God knows when that will be). And, now, with the discovery of oil at Lake Albert in Uganda recently, and as long as Museveni nurses the ambition of becoming the first president of the East African Federation there is no mortal or divine ( !Are you kidding Kagaruki? –Ed.) intervention of any kind which is going to persuade him to let go the reins of power in the foreseeable future. It is going to be a very long wait for Ugandans before they can see his back.