By Andrew M. Mwenda
April 25, 2004
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Last December, Members of Parliament from the war affected districts of north and north eastern Uganda walked out of the house in protest against the inability of government and the military to perform their basic functions�to ensure the safety of person and property against Joseph Kony�s marauding bandits.
No other MPs from other regions of the country saw it as their national duty to also walk out in protest. Many people are intrigued as to how an entire one third of the country can be mired in violent conflict, and over two million people are displaced from their homes, and the rest of the country goes on �business as usual.� In fact the president of the country says this is a �residual problem�, the donors, led by the World Bank keep writing reports titled �From Conflict to Sustained Growth.� What makes this national disregard to an entire region of the country by other nationals possible? What makes the president so callous and the international donor community so insensitive to the suffering of millions? Is this a case of a conspiracy theory where some people have colluded to keep the war a secret? But this is a highly open country, and the violence of the conflict is constantly on the front pages of the national dailies and also a subject of heated discussions on FM radio stations. The walk out of parliament by MPs from war affected areas tells the major failure of Movement politics towards building national consciousness of one Uganda, one people. It is possible that MPs from other regions of Uganda and the entire people of Uganda outside of the war affected areas think that the war in northern Uganda is a local problem only of concern to MPs from the region. I hear people on radio talk shows saying, �Kony kills his own people.� What does this mean? Which people does Kony lead or have to be called �his own�? These attitudes are not a product of Uganda�s ethnic diversity but of the movement politics of individual merit. Individual merit politics actually reinforces the very ethnic identities it was meant to reduce precisely because it turns politics away from being a national process into a community and individual issue. Under a competitive party system, it makes sense for citizens to pay attention to a candidate�s stand on issues affecting the entire national political system. For, if a candidate is committed to a political party, his/her success would affect national policy and his/her performance at the polls would combine with the performance of other candidates from his/her party and their joint performance would help define which team would subsequently control the government. Take the war in northern Uganda for example. If the UPC or DP as opposition parties chose the war in northern Uganda as their campaign platform, regardless of which region or district of the country where the MP is contesting for a seat, it would make sense to both the candidate and the electorate to listen to his/her party�s campaign platform because it cuts across the entire country. However, under the movement-multiple candidate system, it does not make sense for citizens to pay attention to the candidate�s stand on national issues: political competition remains and so does electoral competition. But it takes the form of individual rivalries at the constituency level rather than national rivalries between organised national teams. In our case, individual merit turns out to be how close a candidate is to the president, because that is what determines the distribution of national favours. Thus, under the Movement, if successful, a candidate will become one of the 304 MPs. The candidate�s success would therefore have little impact on national policies. In the absence of a competitive party system therefore, voters behaving rationally would tend to pay more attention to the ability of the candidate to do things of immediate local value than his/her stand on national policies. The candidates seeking votes would therefore possess an incentive to compete in terms of their ability to deliver particular local. That brings us full circle to the MPs walk out. It does not pay for other MPs to follow colleagues from Acholi, Lango and Teso in walking out of parliament because that does not advance their electoral fortunes. The war in northern Uganda has therefore been contained in the prism of an ethnic conflict affecting only the Acholi, or Langi, and the Iteso; rather than a national problem. Under such circumstances, the government would find it difficult to sustain itself in power for 18 years without ending the rebellion. Under a multi party competitive system, the issues regarding the persistence of war would become more pronounced. Is the war persisting because of the support given to Kony by the Sudan? Or is Kony actually exploiting inner weaknesses of the Uganda army whose morale is very low because soldiers are under paid, poorly housed, badly dressed, inefficiently equipped and hardly treated of injuries? From this perspective, the war in northern Uganda, the Movement political system and search for a presidency for life by President Museveni are all intimately connected.
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� 2004 The Monitor Publications
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