Why Mr Museveni gets away with it
April 3, 2003
There were no prizes for guessing the outcome. Once President Yoweri Museveni made his proposals to the Movement National Executive Committee for onward presentation to the National Conference of the Movement, it was always clear he was going to have his way.
President Museveni wanted the delegates to open up the political space by freeing political parties while at the same time retaining the Movement as a broad-based political organization. He asked them to discuss the merits of amending the Constitution to remove term limits for a president. Mr Museveni also wanted the powers of Parliament curtailed.
He particularly sought the powers to censure ministers to be vested with the president; reduce the powers of Parliament to withhold the president's ministerial nominations; remove educational qualifications for elective offices; and reduce the proportion of MPs needed to approve the takeover of a district by the president.
When it first came to light that the president had made a turn around in his radical position on political parties, many thought he wanted the Movement to be firmly in charge of the inevitable transition to multiparty democracy.
Now it transpires that the son of Kaguta was making a calculated move that would see him benefit immensely from his apparent magnanimity. Not only does he get the opportunity to contest for future elections, he also gets more powers for his future presidency.
It is like a man who provides you free shelter, but ends up taking your wife and daughter. Or better still, it is like the Movement's bureaucrats who will only process the claims of government creditors on the condition that they take half the money. Everybody is supposed to be happy, right? Well, we are not all happy!
According to press reports, during the NEC meeting in Kyankwanzi, only Maj. Gen. Mugisha Muntu, Local Government minister Jaberi Bidandi Ssali, Ethics and Integrity minister Miria Matembe, East African Commmunity Secretary General Amanya Mushega and former minister Matthew Rukikaire opposed the lifting of the two-term constitutional limit.
Meanwhile, Mr Museveni tried to avoid creating the impression that he was the one who wanted a third term (fifth term, according to some, considering that he had served two full terms before the 1996 elections).
But that would be a hard sale. Had President Museveni come out clearly and declared he would not seek another term, constitutional amendment or not, all the sycophants who were pushing that line would have realised the folly of their enterprise.
Instead, the president kept on peddling the nebulous view that he would respect the Constitution, well knowing that amending it under its own provisions would not contradict his position should he decide to make it clear he still wants to stay on.
The current theatre of the absurd is not unlike the process that created the 1995 Constitution. While that document has many progressive provisions, it also has several claw backs that were included precisely because Mr Museveni and the delegates who debated and enacted it were not looking beyond their short-term political interests.
As early as 1994, I was among those Ugandans who were "advising" President Museveni to leave power while we still loved him. By then his catalogue of achievements had earned him a legitimate place at the high table of African statesmen. Nine years later, we are hard-put telling the difference between Mr Museveni and the power-hungry African dictators who replaced the White colonialists.
As Maj. Gen. Mugisha Muntu, a member of the UPDF High Command and East African Legislative Assembly, reportedly said at the NEC meeting, at the end of the day, it is only the president to decide what he wants. "It is about legacy and legacy is not shared," Gen. Muntu was quoted as saying. He added that Mr Museveni would remain influential without necessarily being president (South Africa's Nelson Mandela and Tanzania's late Julius Nyerere are prime examples).
But true to character, President Museveni reportedly told his erstwhile army commander that he was not worried about the question of legacy because he had worked hard for it.
Yes, Mr President, you have worked hard for your legacy, but you have perhaps even worked harder at tearing it down.
The one thing for Mr Museveni and his army of sycophants, though, is that for now they can virtually get away with whatever they want. There will be some noise on the radio talk shows and in newspaper opinion columns and letters to the editor, but they will only serve to steam off the anger of the critics.
As a citizenry, our recent record at petitioning and checking government and our leaders is dismal. In the last six months alone, government closed down The Monitor newspaper, an important institution of civil society; fuel prices have gone up three times; there are increasing reports of torture and inhuman treatment in the so-called safe houses; the armed rebellion in the north continues, and the debacle in the Democratic Republic of Congo threatens to worsen.
But for a majority of us, it is business as usual. We do not believe we can do anything about it, and Museveni and Co. know it. In any case, if we are that incensed about Mr Museveni's third, fifth or whatever term(s), we can still throw him out come the elections.
But at the end of the day, as one French philosopher so ably put it, people get the kind of government they deserve. We are losers and we deserve no better than the self-seekers who were the liberators of yesterday. And it sickens me!
This column will become a permanent feature on this page every Thursday.
� 2003 The Monitor Publications
