| Museveni facing gruesome task | Send to a friend |
| Thursday, 19 May 2011 22:09 |
 Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni is in hot water and no one knows for sure what is going to happen to the strongman, who has held absolute power for 25 years, and still has five years to go, fresh from his swearing-in ceremony last week. Will he let it go or kill to stay in power?Mr Museveni, 67, a former “born-again” Christian of the late 1960s, who once worked as an intelligence officer in the defunct State Research Bureau (SRB) under President Milton Obote, is facing intense pressure from the opposition led by Dr Kizza Besigye, his one-time physician during his bush war. The President, who trained as a guerilla fighter in Mozambique in the 1970s, after completing his Bachelor’s degree at the University of Dar es Salaam, has proved to be an authoritarian leader, who banks his domestic political success on police brutality and military might against his own poor people. Regrettably, Mr Museveni thinks that bullets can keep him in power forever, forgetting that Uganda belongs to Ugandans.Dr Besigye, a tough-skinned retired colonel, who has run in elections three times, commands an unprecedented popularity totally antithetical to the image painted by the results of the recent presidential election in which Mr Museveni was “awarded” almost 70 per cent of the votes. Dr Besigye trailed him in the 20s. No one in the Ugandan government can reasonably explain why one who lost by a landslide in the presidential election would be able to command a formidable crowd that closed down Kampala’s roads for nine hours last week, when he recently returned from Nairobi. Dr Besigye had gone to Nairobi for medical treatment after being beaten by plainclothes officers. It is the same story in other African countries, where a loser commands a bigger crowd than a winner. Only in Africa can this happen! Shame on us! Uganda, very unfortunately, has never known true peace since its independence in 1962. Premier Milton Obote, who later made himself president, misgoverned the country, and was overthrown by Idi Amin, who ended up killing almost 300,000. Dr Obote, Mr Museveni and other fled to Tanzania and had to wait until 1979, when Tanzanian troops liberated Uganda. Uganda would then go into a rollercoaster of civil wars before settling down in January 1986, under Mr Museveni as the military-civilian president. He hired his Tanzanian friends for sensitive positions to successfully build a new Uganda, but after two decades with rebels fighting in the north and the economy slowing down, he has become a liability to Ugandans. Once a former darling of the West, Mr Museveni now hopes that his military mission in Somalia will cushion him against any condemnation, or even prosecution from the West should he continue to kill. He has deployed thousands of troops to Somalia in an effort to pacify Al Shabaab. Will he succeed in dragging the West into his fishnet? Unlike during the Cold War when Western nations initiated civil wars in Africa, today the policy is different. They want Africa to remain peaceful, provide markets, raw materials and sweet crude oil whenever it is possible and stop siphoning Western cash through endless peacekeeping missions. The big brothers are tired and fed up. Here is the challenge to the West though. Which is the safest direction to take in Uganda? Support Mr Museveni because of the Somali mission, and then witness Uganda going back to total civil unrest or do something else? What is that something else? A Ugandan paper, Daily Monitor, on Wednesday quoted Mr Museveni desperately declaring: “The media houses both local and international such as Al-Jazeera, the BBC and Daily Monitor and NTV are enemies of Uganda’s recovery and they will be treated as such.” However, the same paper quoted the coordinator of the protests, Mr Matthias Mpuuga, the MP for Masaka, as saying: “We will not rest until democracy thrives in the country. We shall work to ensure that the democracy, which is entrenched in gunmanship and impunity, ends.” Whatever happens in Uganda, East Africa may never be the same again unless the Besigye “Walk-to-Work” protests end abruptly. The Museveni regime may arrest and kill, but they won’t finish all of them as happened particularly in Tunisia and Yemen. How will Kenyans behave in their General Election next year? How will the opposition behave in Tanzania in these four years until the 2015 elections? Rwanda may hold a bit, Burundi seems to be surviving but Kenya and Tanzania are now extremely unpredictable. What is next in East Africa if President Museveni falls into big trouble this year? It will be an interesting and very painful thing to watch. Things will be gloomy for Uganda in the coming days as in the whole of East Africa, whose leaders are deliberately keeping silent. Let us see what will unfold. Mr Matinyi is a consultant based in Washington, DC Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites           |
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It is clear you do not live in Uganda or have a clue about the local politics. What "unprecedented popularity" does Besigye have? Do you not realise that he actually got less votes than in the last elections? The only reason why Besigye has gone the "high drama" way was because he was facing "extinction" as a leader even in his own FDC party. It's unfortunate that the world has been treated to this high drama but it will cool off and then what next for Bwana Besigye? He will try to conjure up another 'stage act'. As some wise man said Besigye is trying to achieve on the streets what he failed to achieve through the vote! In reality, that will not happen. The only thing he has confirmed is that he represents "a free-for-all attitude, disorderliness & chaos" which the majority of Ugandans will reject again at the next polls in 2016.
I find your article very insinuative and misleading. Ugandans were not foolish to have voted for Museveni and left Besigye in the February 2011 elections. Your article leaves out facts that Besigye from the start had indicated that if he losses elections, he will employ other means of "squeezing Museveni from all sides until he leaves power." Is that democracy and patriotism or something else? What Museveni meant about these foreign and local media house is that they are unbalanced in their coverage of the events, painting Besigye as a saint without a slightest hint on his personal selfish political ambitions. It is not a problem for Besigye to come into power, but certainly there is a problem when he wants to employ unconstitutiona l means. Please be fair in your assesments.
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