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THE WRITER: Frederick Golooba Mutebi |
Since he seized power nearly 20 years ago, President Museveni has been claiming, largely without challenge, that political parties are responsible for the turmoil this country witnessed before he and his friends liberated it.
These claims are now believed by a large number of people in this country, regardless of their level of education. They, for example, form the subtext of Eva Mwines Go Get the Truth from the People (The New Vision, July 27). There are common threads linking people who spread this distortion of Ugandas history. Some are otherwise well-read and informed Movementists who, nonetheless, use propaganda to try and advance personal and party Movement interests. Others are those who, due to deliberate misinformation and disinformation by the Movement, believe its accusations against the parties and parrot them. Some of these are the average uneducated or half-educated and barely literate, man and woman on the street or village path. Others, surprisingly, are well-educated university graduates, victims of our societys poor reading culture. Careful reading of Ugandas history exposes the claims for what they are: lies and deceitful propaganda.
The major
source
of political instability in Uganda has been state-inspired violence and armed struggle for power, not brawls between supporters of rival political parties. The single incident that launched this country onto the path of state-inspired political violence and turmoil was the attack by the security forces on the Kabakas palace in 1966. When Obote used the military to try and settle political arguments and then seize power unconstitutionally, he achieved two things. First, he showed the army that it was acceptable for it to use violence to overthrow a sitting government. Second, he demonstrated that for a leader who enjoyed support from the military, respect for the Constitution was a matter of choice and convenience.
Obotes actions were not sanctioned by his party, UPC, but by a small band of radical nationalist advisers and hangers-on, some high up in the echelons of the Movement government. He did not enjoy the support of either the Democratic Party or Kabaka Yekka. H
e was
motivated by naked ambition and the mistaken belief that only he had the vision to unify and develop the country. When he went on to use the army and the General Service Unit to intimidate and suppress his critics and opponents, he did not have the mandate of political parties. Nor did he have it when he decided deliberately to ethnicise the military in a vain attempt to beef up the security of his regime. Obotes belief that the interests of Uganda could be served best with UPC as a single, dominant and uncontested party enjoying state protection and patronage, was not the outcome of consultations with the Democratic Party or the Kabaka Yekka.
When Obote was eventually ousted by Idi Amin, the latter was not contracted by political parties. When Amin decided to purge the military of Obotes Langi tribesmen and Acholi allies by murdering them, he did not have the blessing of political parties. Nor did they sanction his eight-year reign of terror during which hundreds
of
thousands of Ugandans were murdered by security agents. No political party requested Idi Amin to declare party politics illegal or appoint himself president-for-life and extinguish hope for peaceful change of leadership. No political party asked him to violate Tanzanias territorial integrity leading to the war that ousted him, leaving many dead Ugandans in its wake.
The events leading up to the disputed 1980 elections which provided Museveni and his friends with the pretext for going to the bush were not directly linked to political parties, but to individuals within them. For the most part, as many now know, some of them were people bent on acquiring power by hook or crook and keeping it at all cost. Which parties have or have had manifestos advocating the use of arms to settle political arguments or supporting the president-for-life machinations of their leaders?
No political party sent Museveni and his friends to the bush to launch a war that for all intents an
d
purposes contributed to the escalation of political violence in this country. No political party told Obote that it was good to have a military that robbed, raped, and murdered people with impunity. No political party asked the Movement to suspend political party activity for the last 19 years. And, no political party sent Lakwena, Kony, Odong Latek and many other rebels to the bush. As I write, no political party, not even the NRM-O, has endorsed President Musevenis determination to resolve the crisis in northern Uganda by force of arms.
All this shows that when Movementists accuse their critics of historical amnesia or political amnesia as Eva Mwine calls it, they are, once again, making false accusations. It is not political parties that have bred chaos in this country and caused Ugandans so much misery. It is power-hungry and deluded visionary politicians and their corrupt and impressionable supporters.
The writer is a political scientist
Published on: Monday, 1st August, 2005 |
