Ndugu Mitayo,
I understand your concerns. But I think they are misplaced in the
context of my latest article, whose subject is how the people of
northern Uganda, with the support of the rest of the country, said
enough is enough. My article doesn't suggest, even remotely, that
Museveni's and the NRM's win in southern, eastern, or western Uganda
was the outcome of a free and fair electoral process.
If you've been reading my column, I've mentioned several times in the
past that the 2006 general elections were massively rigged. It was
obvious, and I pointed this out repeatedly before the polls, that the
elections were being stolen even before people voted. Election rigging
in Uganda is a phenomenon that many other writers have exahustively
addressed in the correct contexts.
Short of writing meandering, unfocused jeremiads there is no way I can
squeeze in a full catalog of the NRM's sins each time I pick up my pen.
There just is no way I can change the thought processes of people who
jump to unwarranted conclusions. So, I guess, you and I must suffer
them with patience as we chip away at this monolith casting a pall on
us all.
Thanks.
V
Mitayo Potosi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Comrade Vukoni,
You say that "The people in the marginalised areas of Uganda,
including the long-suffering Acholi, showed their anger against
Museveni's stone-deaf government with a stunning vote for the
opposition during elections this year. "
Yes but there is this notion, peddled sometimes with undercurrents
of tribal animosity, that while the North voted against m7 the South
voted for him.
In my home area, you may not believe this but, Speaker Edward
Ssekandi of the NRM lost the vote. DP and a Mr Mbabali clearly were the
choice of this Masaka area.
M7 and the electoral commission rigged Ssekandi in.
The strange part is that DP itself dissuaded Mr Mbabali from
contesting the unfortunate theft of the people's vote. Their motivation
was the usual cant. That Ssekandi is their buddy. A "good man". "A
Catholic". etc.....
I am sure there are other areas in the "South" where votes were
robbed.
The pattern of stealing was designed to indicate that while the
North rejected m7 at least he obtained his majority, and mandate, from
the South.
It would be tragic for us to swallow this lie.
Comrade Vukoni we rely on patriots like you to use your column to
keep truth in the face of Ugandans. Lest they drift off into the
tribal bickering trap that m7 so clearly set.
Mitayo Potosi
===========================================
OPINIONS & COMMENTARIES
THIRD EYE OPEN | Vukoni Lupa Lasaga
...
Civil society?s role is key in the success of Juba talks
July 25, 2006
The peace talks went into recess without any significant
breakthough. No, the photo op between Chief of Military Intelligence
Col. Leopold Kyanda and LRA commander Lernard Bwone Lubwa at the
Saturday cocktail party at Juba?s Raha Hotels doesn?t count.
If history is anything to go by, our self-serving politicians and
the soldiers who for one reason or the other continue to kill and die
for them have a disquieting penchant for eating from the same bowl on
one day and massacring each other and luckless civilians on the next.
So, the jury is still out on how the worm will turn. But this isn't
to say that no progress is being made. The interesting thing is that
unlike in past peace talks, civil society, represented by religious and
traditional leaders, is playing a more prominent role.
To a certain extent, the initiator of the peace effort, Dr Riek
Machar, vice president of the southern Sudanese government, was
responding to pressure from wananchi in his own backyard when he
convened the talks in Juba.
Not much is known in Uganda about how religious and community
leaders in southern Sudan have, in the course of over 20 years of
enduring war, repeatedly confronted the SPLA/M leadership over human
rights violations.
That same spirit of courage apparently came into play when local
leaders made it known to the southern Sudanese government that they did
not want to see Joseph Kony and Yoweri Museveni?s fighters continuing to
kill, loot, rape and maim their people in a senseless war..
Quite independent of the southern Sudanese development, a similar
groundswell of revulsion has built up among the civilian population in
northern Uganda and the rest of the country against the human cost of a
war in which more non-combatants are dying than the belligerents. The
result has been the extraordinary mobilisation of the residents of the
internally displaced peoples camps and other concerned Ugandans.
The unflinching leadership of Catholic Archbishop John Bosco Odama
of Gulu and retired Anglican Bishop Macleod Baker Ochola and
traditional chiefs and politicians from the war ravaged areas
eventually managed to pierce national and international apathy.
In the past year alone, these men of the cloth, former top UN civil
servant Olara Otunnu, and concerned nongovernmental organisations bore
witness to the suffering of millions and drew the attention of the
media, diplomats, politicians, and increasingly ordinary people in the
Western countries -- Museveni's traditional allies.
Externally, the UN raised the ante by labeling the northern crisis,
the world?s worst neglected humanitarian disaster. Oprah Winfrey, on at
least two occasions, delivered footage of the plight of at-risk northern
Ugandan children, directly into the living rooms of tens of millions of
viewers of her talkshow.
Young North American activists took up the cause of the night
commuters making and screening documentaries of the heartrending
stories of innocent people, two generations of them, being wasted
physically and psychically in virtual concentration camps.
Two months ago, thousands of citizens in the United States and
Canada started walking for miles and sleeping out in solidarity with
the night commuters. Many more called their senators and congressmen,
asking what they were doing about the appalling conditions in northern
and eastern Uganda. But by and large, the rise in the level of
consciousness about the northern war is a collective achievement of
ordinary Ugandans: media, musicians, social workers, activists,
politicians, and wananchi whose individual voices trickled and grew
into a mighty river, whose roar could no longer be dammed or tamed by
slick UPDF/NRM propaganda.
The people in the marginalised areas of Uganda, including the
long-suffering Acholi people, showed their anger against Museveni's
stone-deaf government with a stunning vote for the opposition during
elections this year.
This is the political environment in which the NRM could no longer
afford to do business as usual while more civilians died or suffered
bodily and mental mulitation.
Once again, last Thursday, civil society in southern Sudan and
northern Uganda closed ranks even as the LRA and the NRM/UPDF continued
to shadow box from across the negotiating table. The elders from
communities on both sides of the common border told UPDF and LRA to
stop their obduracy because civilians were dying.
IRIN, the UN sponsored news service, reported that the elders handed
a statement to the LRA and Ugandan government delegation in which they
cited incidents of atrocities both sides committed against civilians.
Quick note: Regardless of George Bush and Tony Blair?s hypocrisy,
the killing and kidnap of a handful of Israeli soldiers cannot justify
the medieval vengeance with which Israel is bombing Lebanon into the
stone age. The images that Israel?s actions in Gaza and Lebanon evoke
is that of the punitive air and ground raids of the white supremacist
soldiers of Apartheid killing South African refugees and their hosts in
neighboring countries.
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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