Nation is Greater Than Museveni, Besigye

Oweyegha-Afunaduula

19 May 2011

opinion

I read President Museveni’s comment , ‘Besigye is treacherous – Museveni’ in Daily Monitor of May 18 critically. I wanted to find something different from what I have heard the President say since 1987. I found more or less the same things -police weakness (despite years of “professionalisation”), laxity of some elements in the judiciary, irresponsible press, treason, criminal and the word treacherous.

The President continues to deflect public opinion (kugumaaza) from the real issues requiring political action to solve. Such deviation has worked in the past to create a Ugandan society that is docile, fearful, complacent, resigned to fate and sufficiently dependent on the choices of the President.

Like the UPC used to count their dead chairmen during Mr Museveni’s rebellion in the Luweero Triangle, his military exploits in northern Uganda soon after the fall of the Okello junta; and in the wake of Kony rebellion, the President listed many NRM chairmen attacked, not killed, during the walk-to-work campaign. Apparently, almost all the dead during the campaign were not demonstrators – they are victims of police and military brutality!

Why a repeat of attacks on chairmen in the past? What remains to be solved politically, not militarily or with harsh laws? Are Amin’s 18 reasons for overthrowing Obote, some of which Museveni himself used to justify his rebellion against Obote’s second regime, still begging to be addressed? Doesn’t the President need to tell the citizens to what extent he has moved to tackle or entrench those issues? Issues such as corruption and ethnicity in politics? Could these have anything to do with unjust society and prices?

Circumventing, of course, mentioning how people’s water was polluted and food crops destroyed with chemical weapons in Teso and the north during his armed struggles, and the numbers of people who died, the President was at pains to depict Besigye and company as “aiming at destroying people’s property, have some Ugandans killed and intimidate those who do not support their reactionary positions”.

This is, of course, what the President needed to set the stage for baptising them “criminals” and then marshalling “…all angles of the law…” to end the criminality he prescribes. We might find that in the next five years, the programme of action of the President, helped by the 9th Parliament, will be to criminalise opposition politicians, the media people and others even more, while evading the real weaknesses and failures in political governance.

The word “treacherous”, when used by a reigning President to describe an alternative leader, is extremely strong, and reflect the inner thinking and perception of the President of his nemesis while underlying the crisis of respect that has consummated Uganda’s politics. The word is a mouthful in meaning: unfaithful, disloyal, deceitful, false, double-crossing, untrustworthy, perfidious and underhanded. That is the President’s perception of Besigye. And we are what we think!

I don’t know how Besigye would describe Mr Museveni, whom fallen President Obote used to say “only tells the truth by accident!” My view, however, is that Uganda’s problems should not be collapsed to Besigye or Museveni. Uganda is greater than these two men. Of course, one is in power and the other seeks to be in power.

I suggest, as I recently did on one Fm Radio, that both men drop their egos and see each other as essential partners in charting a dynamic future of political peace, stability and sustainability of Uganda. Talking to is better than stalking each other! Libyan progress is now in ashes because Gaddafi did not see any use in others who opposed his political ways!

Mr Afunaduula is an environment, political and social critic

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