The last scene of a tragedy
Godfrey Chesang: ANALYSIS 10 March 2006 07:43
Supporters of Ugandas President Yoweri Museveni cheer during a rally in Kampala before the general elections last month. (Photograph: AP)
President Yoweri Musevenis February 23 election victory is tragic. He changed the Constitution to eliminate the presidential term limit. Most people knew that if he stood for president, he would ensure victory by hook or by crook. Although valid, the complaints by Ugandas opposition that the elections were not free and fair now look like the performance of the last scene in a tragedy.
To begin with, Museveni had a clear head start using his control of a patently biased state apparatus to intimidate the opposition. Leading opposition candidate Kizza Besigye spent six crucial campaign weeks in jail and that clearly slowed down his campaign.
An excellent record in normalising seemingly intractable situations backed Musevenis incumbency. On coming to power in 1986, he brought a stop to the raging civil war in Uganda and turned its economy around, consistently posting solid growth fo r more than a decade. He took credit for arresting a rampant HIV/Aids epidemic, introducing universal primary education and positioning himself as the Western powers poster boy in the region.
This is a record the opposition could not deny. The option left to them was to catalogue Musevenis recent failures, most notably his drift into dictatorship and corruption. But this was old news to the electorate, who were waiting for pragmatic alternatives that the opposition failed to offer.
Also, Museveni and his cronies framed the elections as deciding on peace or an opposition government, as if the two are mutually exclusive.
Given Ugandas violent past, the implied promise to disrupt the peace -- and Musevenis claim that Besigye would not be able to control the army -- was not taken lightly by voters.
Although the opposition was at its strongest since 1986, it was still at a formative stage, under-resourced, disjointed and wit h a support base quarantined within urban areas and the war-torn north. The leading opposition party, the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), which won 19 out of 68 districts, had not developed a distinct identity and alternative appeal from that of the ruling junta. Leading lights in the FDC such as Winnie Byanyima, Bidandi Ssali, Eriya Kategaya and its presidential candidate, Besigye, are all former members of Musevenis National Resistance Movement.
Most of them defected, supposedly because of disillusionment with Musevenis leadership and corruption in government, but more likely as a result of frustrated political and material ambitions. Other opposition parties, such as the Democratic Party and Ugandas Peoples Congress, were to most Ugandans vestiges of pre-1986 Uganda.
What drove the last nail into the oppositions coffin was the lack of a freshly ground, pepper-hot candidate to take out the big man. Besigye was seen as a David who would take out Goliath. But th is image obscured his background and merits as the man to take on Museveni. Although he polled a respectable 37% of the vote, Besigye was for all practical purposes the second best man. In terms of wit, bravado, tact, strategy, political resources and sheer force of personality, Museveni was clearly the better of the two.
Up to four months ago, Besigye was a refugee in South Africa. He had fled Uganda after losing to Museveni in the 2001 elections. The fact that Besigye is married to an alleged former mistress of Museveni was fertile ground for chauvinistic imagination. The contrast with Museveni is devastating. Apart from his sharp Machiavellian instinct, populist wit and daredevil bravado, Museveni still enjoys significant popularity, in spite of a receding messianic halo. Under the circumstances, Besigye could only be Musevenis pale alter ego.
And so an election on which Ugandans were expected to freely and fairly choose a leader was turned, not only into a tragedy , but also into a farce. It is now that the real battle to take out Museveni begins.
Godfrey Chesang is a doctoral fellow at the Centre for Africas International Relations at Wits University
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