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THE WRITER: Ofwono Opondo |
THE referendum to change from the Movement to multipartysm is over with a success. We should be mad about multipartysm, but it is likely to be reduced to a two-party system, between the NRM, and combined opposition. We shall witness a two-way contest because the strengths and credibility of individual parties is too diminished to offer any meaningful and real alternative to the NRM, and so, plots are underway for mergers, coalition, and syndicated electoral alliances. Fortunately, building alliances, especially with old parties is a non-starter because their records are awful although their leaders now hope that the new parties fuelled purely by cycles of passion can survive for long. Yet the new groups like FDC whose temporary supremo Proscovia Salaamu Musumba claimed recently that there was a plot to kill her also strangely hope to drain support from DP and UPC. So far, FDC has failed to recruit the so-called big guns from Lango sub-region because their political fate are entwined with UPC tribal sentiments to its life president Milton Obote. And having failed to block so far, the scrapping of presidential term limits under article 105 (2), they are now plotting 'mass' street protests or election 'boycott' should the NRM float President Yoweri Museveni as its candidate. In fact, the opposition is planning more desperate, if not sinister plans to show that the entire political transition is nothing but a fraud, and will not stop conjuring up false conspiracy theories to win sympathies and prepare public mood for their eventual defeat as Kizza Besigye and wife Winnie Byanyima did in 2001. In this, they hope to control events and history. In 44 BC, a group of Roman nobles conspired to murder Julius Caesar, the most popular, powerful, and wealthy politician in the then world's richest and strongest city, Rome. They did it to stop Caesar from dismantling Rome's republican government and make himself king. Instead, a civil war broke out, leading to their, and Rome's destruction as a republic, and in its place arose a new system headed by an emperor more powerful than any king. Killing Caesar was easy, but controlling history was another matter! Sometimes, Ugandans recite the term multipartysm in tones of reverence having copied from western European models, and falsely believe it is synonymous with democracy. Other times some of us, and history bears witness, utter the term as a curse, and question why westerners tell us to choose between near-indistinguishable options, when the no-party movement democracy had worked where parties destroyed! But that is now like crying for spilt milk, and since the constitution sets no limit, we now have 26 registered parties, and more are coming, even if most will not come out of the woods. Shall we name names? Action, Mandate, Socialists, Democrats, Forum, Truth, Justice, Congress, Progressive, Peasants, Workers, Reform Party, and the list goes on. No one mandates it, but as the campaign season has come up to march 2006 government and NRM politicians should get the hose out to spray themselves clean as they drive through opposition false storms of fabricated slurs, innuendos, insults, and lies. Already Musumba's claim of plans to assassinate her is on table, and her innuendo about Gen. John Garang's death in our presidential helicopter also fits in well. And you wonder why Uganda is so endowed with political parties led by intellectuals but limited to this Tweedledum and Tweedledee type of opposition politics. It is almost certain that opposition politicians, and sections of the media, will claim and bemoan how the coming elections will be nastier that 'previous' ones, and recall the 'good old days' when British colonialism ruled without elections. Do not be surprised if Musumba, Betty Kamya, and Wafula Oguttu remind you of the golden age of dignified democracy under Obote and Idi Amin in comparison to Museveni "dictatorship" and a "secret political mafia" gang they claim rules Uganda. You may get disappointed but remember that way back in the 1950s, French sociologist Maurice Duverger studied political systems and came up with a proposition now known as Duverger's Law. He said that a system in which the winner takes all, inevitably drifts towards nasty, no matter how many parties come out the gate. According to Duverger, this situation exacerbates despair because careerists know that once they lose elections, they have only one option - going back home to wash dishes at no pay
The NRM only needs to co-opt enough good ideas to make them irrelevant and voters who will then send them back into the woods. Ends
Published on: Friday, 5th August, 2005 |
