Dictator Museveni.Photo: Facebook.
[Commentary]
In 1980, Uganda’s supreme monarch, Gen. Yoweri Kaguta Museveni, at the helm of the country’s politics for 35 years now, launched a guerrilla warfare against the sitting government of President Milton Obote, purportedly to restore democracy in Uganda. He had participated unsuccessfully in the 1980 elections and therefore resorted to violence to topple the said government from power. Indeed, five years later, after about 500,000 deaths, he overthrew Obote’s government.
In the aftermath, Museveni sold a deceptive narrative about engendering democratic governance to the people of Uganda. He denounced African leaders who overstayed in power. His words, however, didn’t match his deeds. There were obviously, many tell-tale signs very early that indicated that the man who had violently grabbed power was a charlatan not committed at all to the ideals he professed.
But the people of Uganda are tolerant and patient; they gave him the benefit of the doubt. Moreover, Ugandans were tired of war. Soon, it became evidently clear that the man was not working to engender democracy in our land, rather he was hell bent on entrenching himself in power for self aggrandizement.
In recent years, he has publicly confessed about the real reasons why he went to the bush to overthrow Obote’s government. When he was asked on Jan. 26, 2017 by NTV, a major regional T.V station about why he continues to cling to power, he said he is not a servant of anybody; that he is a “freedom fighter” fighting for his own interests and beliefs.
On another occasion when he was confronted with a similar question by Jeff Koinange of KTV, a Kenyan based network, he retorted that he was not working for anybody but for himself, his children, and grandchildren.Before that, in the early 2000s, Museveni held a joint meeting of the ruling party National Resistance Movement (NRM) politburo, Members of Parliament, and army chiefs, to discuss his intention to remove the term limit from the Constitution. His Army commander at the time, Gen. Mugisha Muntu, counseled him to care about his legacy and avoid removal of the term limit from the constitution. He responded unequivocally that he didn’t care about his legacy. So, for keen observers of Uganda’s politics, Gen. Museveni’s public confessions, leave no doubt whatsoever in our minds, about the reasons for the goings-on in the country’s politics currently.
It needs to be pointed out that Gen. Museveni has a natural phobia for competitive politics. In fact, since he started participating in politics, he has never won in a fair manner, any election. In the 1980 vote, he was defeated, fair and square by his erstwhile nemesis, the current partner in crime, foreign affairs minister, Sam Kutesa, who crushed him and won the Parliamentary seat. Since taking power, Museveni has organized about eight shambolic, commercial, and violent national “elections.” The last one being this year’s carnage in which more than 100 innocent Ugandans have been slain in cold blood by Museveni’s security forces.
Besides being ritualistic, all these elections have been marred by unprecedented violence manifest through killings of opposition party supporters, severe torture, maiming, and arbitrary incarceration of political opponents. Robert Kyagulanyi, a.k.a. Bobi Wine, Museveni’s strongest challenger in the Jan. 14, 2021 vote was placed under house arrest for a crime that doesn’t exist in our statute books—the sin of challenging Gen. Museveni for the presidency of the country, and apparently winning.
Before that, Dr. Kiiza Besigye underwent similar mistreatment in the hands of the security agencies for committing the same “crime” of contesting against Gen. Museveni for the presidency, and also apparently winning on a number of occasions, including 2016.
Gen. Museveni’s lies can’t sell anymore. His kaleidoscopic character has been seriously exposed by the progressive struggles for liberation by the people of Uganda. He is currently suffering from acute challenges of illegitimacy. Therefore, he can no longer con Ugandans to vote for him. He has shamelessly resorted to buying Ugandans’ votes using things like soap, salt, sugar, matchboxes and actual money. When those don’t work, bullets are used to intimidate voters. A travesty of our country’s democratic development.
Unfortunately, by the time the people of Uganda woke up to Gen. Museveni’s endless lies and insatiable thirst for political power, he had already fully entrenched his claws on the country’s leadership. Consequently, our feelings and thoughts about how we want to be governed don’t count to Museveni. He organizes “elections” in which he is a candidate, an electoral official, as well as the judicial officer who has to resolve conflicts arising from the vote. This has placed our country on the cliff, waiting to be plunged in the deepest end of the sea anytime. The Western countries—including the United States and Britain—who have funded Museveni’s totalitarian regime with more than $40 billion over the past 35 years also bear responsibility for any subsequent eruption.
I state without fear or favor, that Gen. Museveni’s sham elections will not rescue our country from the cliff; only the people of Uganda can save Uganda.
Alluta continua!
