| KAMPALA
We are starting a peculiar, vastly amazing phase in our political evolution whose dominant player and indeed its theme as viewed by outsiders, supporters and opponents alike; will be the unfolding enigma of our times, we could say of Kampala: Yoweri Kaguta Museveni.
The ironies, the shockers, the disbelief and the thrillers have just started. But the ultimate quandary, that moment that will challenge our wisdom as we decide on the future course of our nation is yet to come.
But we've got a precursor.
On June 2nd this year, Daily Monitor's lead news item carried an astounding revelation: more Ugandans, not less, were reported to be expressing support for dropping of presidential term limits. The statistics could be said to be modest. Still, they are sobering enough: 37.3% of the respondents in an opinion poll conducted by Strategic Public Relations & Research firm on behalf of Daily Monitor, affirmed they favored deletion of incumbency limits in our constitution, (parliament has, more or less, already amended article 105 (2) which removed term limits) a number that has grown dramatically from a substantially small, 31.2% in August 2004 when a similar poll had last been conducted.
That disclosure, so chilling to the opposition, came only when their acerbic and ferocious anti Museven campaign messages seemed to have penetrated deeper, inflaming huge sections of the populace upcountry and in Kampala alike.
In fact, the capital appeared to be coalescing around a consensus namely: to emphatically rebuff President Museveni's growing machinations to secure a third elected term in office.
That consensus, apparently, also rang far and wide: UK withheld its aid, Ireland followed and a string of international governance-monitoring organisations, like echo chambers, issued back to back warnings of political manipulation and a dictatorship taking hold on Uganda. Local analysts quickly sounded alarms of a leader getting dejected and a nation slipping into isolation. Timothy Kalyegira, lately the most vicious of Museveni's critics, used a terrifying word: "pariah" state.
Maddening news
And so it must have come as a maddening, almost offending news piece for opponents of Movement and Museveni to be told that, in fact, the nation was instead disbelieving gloomy prophesies and spiting disparaging descriptions of Museveni and getting even more enamored of him, ready to reward him with five more years of top leadership.
Yet, as the same story shows, that was even not the most grating bit: the poll also, thwarting a popular notion, found out that the increase in third term support had surprisingly occurred in towns and among people with education levels of above secondary school.
That comes against a blitz of-more often than not-embarrassingly naïve and speculative newspaper commentaries and FM talk show arguments suggesting that Museveni's hitherto steadfast support is eroding with greater speed though among the educated and urbanized.
Then, came the referendum on July 28. Museveni had only sprang up lately and, with less vigor than he has traditionally shown when canvassing for support, pushed into the vast countryside to cajole, against years of widespread, deeply ingrained mistrust of party politics, people to rally around his newfound conviction-ticking the tree so the country can revert to political pluralism.
That took him an incredibly short three weeks. But the outcome was as dramatic as it was historic: a record 92.5% of those who voted heeded his call and agreed that Uganda should open up. It was the single greatest support that Museveni or his organisation has ever got in any election.
Of course, there have been two converse interpretations of the referendum's outcome. Some have picked on the issue of the low voter turn out, showing it as a bold rejection of Museveni and his leadership. Yet this election was patently more pronounced for its massive pro multiparty outcome than for the somewhat expected low voter turn out, attributed largely to political apathy that is becoming a problem worldwide especially in voting on issues that are less contentious. That is even besides the widespread illiteracy in the populace that makes only a few capable of understanding and deciding on an elitistlike question of choosing between parties and the Movement.
This is the start of a wave of surprises that will, as I foresee it, increase in intensity to make out Kampala's enigmatic figure: a president who will defy characterisation, beat prophesies, fail popular notions, confound donors, and almost seem to transcend our collective understanding.
A mystifying Museveni
Take one example: as the opposition is reporting a terrible dictatorship, presidency for-life political crisis weakening Uganda; the international community is simultaneously seeing a country arguably standing at an all time stable with an economy growing at a heartening average of 5%, inflation tied down, children flooding schools, poverty receding, a high influx of foreigners pulled by growing pockets of economic boom, FDI rising steadily, shops brimming, export trade expanding (earnings have hit $1 billion, Dr Suruma report in June), donor dependence slipping, HIV prevalence beaten back, a middle class emerging and several dozens of other encouraging, spectacular trends
The writer is a reporter with the Daily Monitor
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