Besigye Opposed Museveni's Bid in 1996, And Set Off Movt Demons
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The Monitor (Kampala)
COLUMN
December 15, 2002
Posted to the web December 14, 2002
Charles Onyango-Obbo
Kampala
Last Wednesday in "Are Museveni, Besigye About To Clash In The Second Round
Of Their War?" we noted that if a new rebellion led by exiled former
presidential candidate Col. Dr. Kizza Besigye, and runaway UPDF colonels
Samson Mande, and Anthony Kyakabale who are believed to be the military
leaders of the Peoeple's Redemption Army (PRA) breaks out in the first
quarter of 2003, some fear it will merely be a continuation of the unfinished
business between President Yoweri Museveni and Besigye.
The two men fought it out fiercely in the presidential elections March last
year. Besigye went to court alleging Museveni had robbed the victory. The
close 3-2 ruling by the Supreme Court in favour of Museveni, and the fact
that Besigye "respected" but "didn't accept" it meant that the wider factors
these two men represent would tangle again. The question was how, where, and
when?
While one may talk of unfinished business between Museveni and Besigye, it's
by no means a personal affair. Rather it's about the political forces they
symbolise. Some commentators have said it would be futile for Besigye to go
to the bush because not all members of Reform Agenda, the political pressure
group he formed after last year's elections, would back him, nor would the
25% of the electorate who voted for him follow him to the bush either.
First, rebellions in Uganda have never been won because of mass support.
Museveni's Uganda Patriotic Movement (UPM) was the third in the disputed
December 1980 elections, getting less than 5% of the vote and an electoral
victory in only one constituency. The Democratic Party of Dr. Paul
Ssemogerere that was second in the polls didn't go to the bush. It was
Museveni who did. And not even 0.5 percent who voted for UPM followed
Museveni to the bush - but he eventually won the fight and took power. It is
significant that Museveni started the war with 27 guns and about 32 men.
>From the above, the role of elections in Uganda - for the people who favour
armed "liberation" - is that they are the event that the contending forces
use to recruit supporters for the next stage of their struggle. This is
because an election theft, or the common grievance of having been cheated,
spreads the injury to the "masses who were not clear before".
Museveni, according to his autobiography "The Mustard Seed" had decided and
was working toward fighting Milton Obote as early as the late 1960s, a whole
20 years before the UPC chief played into his hands by cheating Ssemogerere
of victory in 1980.
Thus to the forces who rallied around Besigye, the 2001 election fiasco
helped "make clear the undemocratic character of Museveni" as they put it.
And as Museveni said, it also "exposed the Besigyes as opportunists who were
linked to the old forces that [NRA] defeated in its struggle for freedom".
So what are these forces, particularly the ones that Besigye would claim to
represent?
Though Besigye was a National Political Commissar, minister and Museveni
confidant, by 1996 - as his 1995 decision, and that of other officers like
now Lt. Gen. David Tinyefuza and the late Lt. Col. Serwanga Lwanga to oppose
entrenching the Movement's monopoly of power in the constitution and the
near-banning of political parties - the differences were public. However the
Movement was still a relatively disciplined organisation then, and the
pressure to put on a veneer of unity was high. These differences were
therefore hushed up.
However, it has now emerged that Besigye and other people in the NRM and army
in 1996 were opposed to Museveni running as the Movement presidential
candidate. As with the situation in 2001, it's not clear who these Movement
leaders were. In 1996 Besigye relented at the last minute to go and campaign
for Museveni in Rukungiri. He appeared at no more than two rallies, and spoke
at one. The very personal and acrimonious face off between the two men last
year therefore arose from a feud that had been simmering for about 10 years,
and which shall be a subject of a future article.
Entering into last year's presidential elections, both Museveni and Besigye
were aware that the person who would win was not so much the one who was most
popular, but he who could demonstrate that he had the support of the army
(UPDF). Today even some strong supporters of Besigye in Reform Agenda concede
that if there is a mistake that he made, it was to claim that he had the
support of 95% of the army.
While there are some people in the Museveni camp who agree that Besigye had
support in the UPDF, they are thankful he made a miscalculation of giant
proportions and a fatal underestimation of Museveni's ability to rally the
military by claiming that he had the military's support. Museveni and his men
swung into action, tapping nearly every officer who mattered to pledge
loyalty anew to the Commander-in-Chief, and staring down the ones whose
devotion was suspect into submission. And at that point the UPDF was dragged
deep into the elections - on Museveni's side.
Besigye, however, seems not to share the view that his comments on the UPDF
were a blunder. In his Nov. 25 document titled "The State Of Armed Conflict
(Struggle) And The Prospect For Peace In Uganda", he refers to officers and
men in the UPDF who don't support what he says are the repressive and corrupt
ways of the Museveni government, and that he believes they favour change.
In view of the fact that Besigye says that the situation in Uganda now is
ripe for war, the meaning of this and his presidential election statements
are getting clearer.
The Movement has always had several tensions inside it right from the time it
was in the bush. There was, first the divide between the armed wing which was
fighting in the bush, and the political wing who were doing "political work"
in the safer captured zones in the Luwero Triangle, and abroad as the
external wing (comprising 1st deputy premier Eriya Kategya, National
Political Commissar Dr. Crispus Kiyonga, former minister Matthew Rukikaire,
and so on).
On the whole the political wing tended to have a more moderate view on
politics than the military. But within the military there was the division
between the more educated officers, people like former Army Commander Maj.
Gen. Mugisha Muntu, and then Tinyefuza, Serwanga Lwanga, Besigye, the people
who took an accommodationist view toward the multipartyists in the
Constituent Assembly, and the hard men with little relatively little formal
schooling. If indeed this means anything in the context of the UPDF, the
educated people tended to represent the progressive trend.
What is happening now is that if the armed conflict Besigye says is likely to
come indeed happens, we shall be seeing an inter-UPDF war, between
UPDF-Museveni and UPDF-Besigye (PRA).
This will NOT be a political conflict as such, because that battle will be
between the progressive wing of the Movement, captured by recent calls set
off by Local Government minister Bidandi Ssali "to debate the Museveni
succession and turn the Movement into a party" versus the
"let's-amend-the-constitution-and-give-Museveni another term in 2006" school.
This is the intra-Movement political struggle. The UPDF-PRA clash is the
Movement's intra-military/UPDF struggle.
To demonstrate this point, it is worth noting that Besigye's position in his
Nov. 25 document is closer to the mainstream Movement now than during
elections. While in 2001 Besigye made commitments to return to multi-party
politics, in his "war missive" the word "multipartyism" doesn't even appear.
In this sense, we have the clearest divide ever between the various Movement
tendencies, and the opposition multipartyists. We could therefore be entering
a phase where the multipartyists have the best opportunity to make a case for
what they represent as separate from the Movementists.
The one pro-multiparty politician who understands that there is an
opportunity here is Obote. From his exile in Zambia, Obote recently made his
most unequivocal renunciation of using arms, saying UPC does not believe in
the gun. Though Obote used to taunt Ssemogerere in the 1980s, saying he
didn't have commanders, his change of heart about the role of guns in
politics sounded refreshing in an environment where all debate is about
whether or not the time is ripe for war, whether Joseph Kony's Lord's
Resistance Army (LRA) should be defeated militarily or wooed out of the bush
through a negotiated settlement.
And at a time when leading Movement leaders are saying that the president's
term should be extended, Obote's definitive statement that he was no longer
interested in power sounded superior enough to attract a lot of headline
attention and comment.
But the likes of Obote don't seem to have a highly organised political
vehicle to bring this line to the top of the country's political agenda. Only
the men of arms, the UPDF and PRA can take any initiatives - unfortunately.
