Editorial
Nov 16, 2003
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Vice President Prof. Gilbert Bukenya on Thursday told a group of Movement mobilisers that President Yoweri Museveni is still young and that at only 60, he can still lead the country. To drive his point home, he argued that many countries have presidents aged up to 85 years and who have managed to handle the matters of state well, so Museveni can still be trusted to manage the affairs of Uganda should he want to do so after 2006. Obviously, the vice president was making a pitch for a �third (fifth?) term� for Museveni which has been very much in the air for the greater part of this year. In so doing however, Mr Bukenya seems to have completely misunderstood the premise on which the term limitation clause was inserted into the constitution, and also the basis of opposition to its lifting. Term limits are not meant to deter old people from becoming presidents, rather they are intended to give leaders a time frame in which they should make their contribution to a nation and leave the stage for others to make their mark too. And as former Tanzanian prime minister, Joseph Warioba remarked at a seminar at Hotel Africana last year, two terms (10 years) is long enough for a leader to make his contribution to nation building but short enough for wananchi to tolerate a bad leader. It is therefore not a matter of how old one is. It is a matter of giving every citizen a chance (however remote) to access the highest office in the land and make their contribution. Former US president, Bill Clinton was 46 when he became president and quit when he was only 54, while former South African president, Nelson Mandela became president at 76 in 1994 and quit in 1999 aged 81! Bukenya, as a distinguished academic, is part of the small Ugandan elite that should appreciate issues. But our politics is strange. You find people who should know better, deliberately mixing up issues to serve their political ends. In the process, the ordinary Ugandan who does not have the benefit of wide knowledge (through education or travel) is not only mixed up, but is led the wrong pathway � often with bloody results. |
� 2003 The Monitor Publications
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