By Henry Ochieng
May 1, 2004
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Mr Wanjusi Wasieba has shown more brawn than brain by toying with the idea of running in the Mbale Municipality by-election after someone very high up in the country's politics has advised him that walking is a healthier proposition. Wasieba tells us that he is in the race for the seat that was left vacant after the untimely passing of the honourable James Wapakhabulo. He insists on running although the interim chairman of the National Resistance Movement Organisation (NRMO), Haji Moses Kigongo has said the party's blessings are on one Hassan Galiwango.
This is indiscipline of the naughty sort that should not be tolerated in any decent political organisation. Mercifully, certain goings-on in Kampala on Thursday will mean we should soon see an end to such behaviour. The big chief is officially in now. Mr Yoweri Museveni (scratch that itch to call him by the conventional version of the name Yoweri, which I believe is Joel) revealed to the Movement caucus that he is in NRMO and will not tolerate naughtiness from now on. The immediate endangered species is of the variety that has been speaking out of turn and in doing so sending conflicting signals to the peasant mass support. The species should have seen this coming when the rough and ready director for Information at the Movement Secretariat, Mr Ofwono Opondo told the older and wavering party wigs to shut up. Expect dreary days ahead where every word shall be washed through the tightly controlled channels of a party public relations machine. Most annoying is that we may no longer be the attentive listeners to tales about politicians who are ghosts or judges better employed solving cases of goat theft. How we shall miss the old days of 'political contradictions'. Wasieba's has to be a rare breed to insist on running. In so doing, he runs the risk of being put out to pasture. Luckily for him though, the only difficulty with that choice of action of course would be that NRMO is not your ordinary card-selling organisation. When its promoters were shouting about it they revealed to us that in the spirit of masses, everybody is free to join. So, to eject Wasieba would be a startling contradiction. And that is even before we resolve the contradiction of Kigongo's presence in Mbale Municipality. In what capacity was the gentle fellow in the east? If he was there as overlord of the Movement Secretariat, a statutory body, then he broke a number of laws in fronting Galiwango as the official Movement candidate. We are aware that under certain nefarious laws all Ugandans were conscripted into the Movement political system, thus eliminating the need to choose Wasieba instead of Opondo. And if Kigongo answers that he was speaking in his own right as a party official, is he aware that we are still enjoying the fruits of the individual merit principle under the Movement Political system? Most likely, too Kigongo travelled in his official publicly-owned vehicle with affiliate security, so if he was there as a party man he was breaking the law by being partisan while in state clothes. It is most likely that the Secretariat paid for his accommodation and upkeep when in Mbale and this is also wrong. This is what we call abuse of state resources. These are self-inflicted contradictions arising from the refusal to de-link the state from partisan organisations. As in previous elections, the Mbale Municipality one gives the opponents of the Movement political system a good object for target practice. They do not, however, have to refer to court rulings that stamped an official seal on the long known truth that Joel has been leading us under an illegal one-party system. The Musevenists have no excuse because they were warned right in the Constituent Assembly that the Movement system experiment could only end in embarrassment. With this knowledge in the pocket, the political observer is struck at how even recent history escapes some people. Some people are running in a headlong rush to hold a referendum on political systems and one on the lifting of presidential term limits. The lawyers from either side have pointed at the redundancy of holding such events but once again wiser heads are insisting that Article 74(1) and Article 255 of the constitution offer enough evidence that this route is free of legal mines. Closer investigation of the facts, however, shreds all evidence of such a notion. There wouldn't be any harm in letting this charade get along if they were using their own money. Unfortunately, Shs 30 billion of your taxes is about to be spent on a heinous ego trip because that is the most rational explanation for such wayward behaviour. Government cannot find money to give a token pay rise to poorly paid members of the medical fraternity. Government cannot pay pension arrears to deserving former civil servants. There is no money to support many social services but there is absolutely nothing wrong with pouring Shs 30 billion into a dubious project just to make a crude political point. It is almost as if someone wants to punish the peasants (more than 80 percent of our population is made up of certified peasants). Punish them for sitting by while the Movement was being pressured to dump its cherished one-party system for the universally acclaimed political pluralism under a multi-party democracy. This is yet another contradiction for politicians who say they are with the peasants in mind, body and spirit. The same gentlemen happily expose the masses to unnecessary financial distress. 077 501 436 |
� 2004 The Monitor Publications
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