Bravo Ssalongo, the People's Power!

By Valerian Kkonde

PEARL NEWS SERVICE

Among the Baganda, the father of twins is called Ssalongo and the mother Nnalongo. That is why Kampala’s newly elected Lord Mayor is called Ssalongo Erias Lukwago.

Bravo Ssalongo! You have fought a good fight. You have finished the race. It has not been an easy one; Uganda’s president Yoweri Museveni tried to employ his weird tactics of vote-rigging to ensure that the puppet occupies the seat. The vote-stuffing, multiple voting and violence that characterized the first voting on February 23, 2011 was quite be shaming that even Engineer Badru Kiggundu’s partisan and incompetent Electoral Commission (EC) had to postpone the exercise to March 14, 2011.

Inspector General of Police, Major General Kale Kayihura, deployed heavily armed police officers, backed up by the army wielding machine guns, mortars, anti-aircrafts, tanks and other battle hardware. But goons loaded with clubs adorned with nails went from polling station to polling station beating up those suspected to support Ssalongo.

Kayihura exhibited the highest degree of incompetence, as he put his selfish interests above the natural law of justice and the progress of the country. He was exposed to the extent of leaving the people questioning his mental ability to lead an institution tasked with maintaining law and order.

“The club-wielding goons causing havoc are trained, housed, fed and protected by Kale Kayihura,” the Lubaga Local Council chair person-elect Joyce Ssebuggwawo told the press.

The government-sponsored mayoral candidate, Pastor Peter Ssematimba, housed some of these goons in his Super FM radio station. Yes, he is a Pastor. His display of moral bankruptcy is unrivalled. He is a match for the outgoing mayor, Alhaji Nasser Ntege Ssebaggala another Museveni puppet. For the Pastor, becoming Kampala Mayor was a matter of life and death.

All these acts showed how desperate Museveni was. Five days to the Election Day, the man, who has been in power for the last 25 years, invited Ssalongo’s polling agents to State House, bribed them with 100,000 Uganda Shillings and told them to abandon their preferred candidate! The president went to the extent of swearing that if all fails, he will sabotage Ssalongo’s development plans for the capital city! Yes, it was uncouth.

The state of Kampala today confounds even the densest; sewage all over the place, rotting garbage, unplanned construction, idiotic parking and driving, dusty and potato garden-like roads, lack of drainage facilities and all primitive mannerisms one can think of. Such is the capital city of the once Pearl of Africa!

The people residing, working and passing through Kampala are yearning for some sanity in the city. People want to live like human beings, work in orderly and clean environment, garbage properly disposed off and collected frequently. There is also urgent need to put to halt all these political shopping arcades mushrooming every where but lacking parking space and toilets.

While the city roads are narrow, the problem of continuous traffic jams is compounded by the lack of parking space on all the structures coming up. At the beginning of 2009, the then Town Clerk, Ruth Kijjambu, threatened to close some buildings for lack of parking space. Nothing has been done to date.

Motorcycle riders in the transport industry, popularly called Bodaboda, take advantage of this chaos to cause untold misery. The missing link is regulation. People overwhelmingly voted for Ssalongo to fill that gap. And the people further hope that decongesting the city will be high on the agenda. Introduction of the Buses will be crucial in realizing this.

The two taxi parks in the city are in a dire state. Over 5,000 people use these parks daily but all the managers- the Uganda Taxi Operators and Drivers Association (UTODA)- can do is collect millions of shillings and shout “long live Museveni.” On a rainy day, an unattended pigsty would be a far better place to transit through.

The Law Enforcement department of Kampala City Council had become a law unto itself. The chaos in the city is due to the criminal intent of making quick money and by all means; those who offer them money are left to do whatever they please. Those without money and political connections are always the victims of their greed and madness.

The 229,325 votes that Ssalongo got, compared to Pastor Ssematimba’s 119,015, are a strong statement that people have had enough of the masqueraders who promise heaven but resort to rhetoric devoid of substance when its time for action. The mayor-elect’s past performance as a lawyer and MP for Kampala Central, drives many to expect him to provide the much needed services and sanity in the decaying Kampala city.

President Museveni, in his wisdom, thinks that sabotaging Ssalongo’s development plans is the best thing to do. In a way it is not surprising since even the programs- like the National Agricultural Advisory Services (NAADS) - he has personally supervised have nothing to show in spite of the billions of tax-payer money spent on them. His past 25 years in power have little to credit his concern for the well-being of those he rules.

The hatred for the independent- minded characters like Ssalongo is the very reason that the president is introducing the post of Executive Director for the city so that the mayor’s power and authority is curtailed.

For Museveni, the most important issue is the well-being of his cohorts; the rest can go to hell. There is no doubt that the race for the Mayor’s seat was more than a contest; it was a. statement against vote-rigging, suppression, greed, envy and all forms of political thugery going on in the country.

Indeed the Lord Mayor need not worry. The people’s power is the greatest weapon. If Museveni still doubts this, then he should at least consult Egypt’s former Western-backed Hosni Mubarak.