2016 Elections; Throw out Museveni, Save Uganda from Total Collapse

by Valerian Kkonde

PEARL NEWS SERVICE

 Christopher Aine, who was the head of Independent candidate Amama Mbabazi's security went missing in what relatives and Amama's camp refer to as Police's intent on attacking the Opposition to keep president Museveni in power. Monitor Photo

On February 18, 2016 Uganda will be going to the polls but on her feet bleeding as a result of Museveni’s 30-year rule that has devastated the people’s very existence, institutions, morals, pride and sense of direction.

For president Museveni, so much has been achieved that no other mortal- being can afford to take over from where he has stopped; meaning that he alone is capable of being president of Uganda. That is how Museveni justifies his life-presidency dreams, by brutally clinging to power even if it means bringing Uganda down with him.

A critical analysis of the state of Uganda under Museveni’s rule reveals exactly that: institutionalized robbery of public funds and resources, complete institutional breakdown, state-sponsored terror, rotten health and educational systems, widespread injustices, hatred, selfishness and deep seated treachery to point out but a few. Uganda, no doubt, is on edge and surviving by accident.  

But the more Museveni struggles, albeit unsuccessfully, to justify his dictatorship, systematic failure to deliver and to cover up his allergy to political competition, the more he is undressed naked. His only weapon is that he does not feel ashamed. Museveni is given to retaliating with brutish force, desperate to further cover up his garbage hoping the truth will not surface.

As Museveni desperately traverses every corner of the country to garner support for his continued stay in the presidency, the rotten health system, poverty, jungle law, robbery of public funds and resources are staring him in the face. At least four districts are grappling with cholera and the health facilities lack the basics like gloves to handle this challenge! After thirty years as president! The stupid excuse that hospitals are in a bad shape because concentration has all along been on family health was miserably torn apart.

After Dr. Kizza Besigye, one of the presidential candidates visited Abim district hospital and found it in shambles; government has instead found it wise to deploy police to bar opposition presidential candidates from visiting the other equally neglected health facilities. Hope ministry of health, Electoral Commission and police will come out to tell the country the number of lives saved following the deployment.

For sure truth cannot be suppressed for good; as the hunt for votes intensifies, a man did the abominable by trying to operate his expectant wife from home! He had failed to get help from the nearby health facility. The mother and baby could not survive this rudimentary attempt at fixing the health system stinking from thirty years of neglect.

In Karamoja where his wife Janet Kataha is minister, people are dying of hunger. And soon they will be dying of anger. The president had spared no energy in justifying the appointment of his wife to the ministerial post claiming she alone could handle Karamoja region. The praises heaped on Janet “for transforming Karamoja” remain mere rhetoric devoid of substance. The roads are so impassable that the trucks that try to take the desperately needed food spend weeks on the way praying for the dry weather.

The Presidential Elections Act of 2005, Section 26, states that it is an offence to interfere with the electioneering activities of any presidential candidate, directly or indirectly. President Museveni’s supporters have made it a habit to provoke other candidates’ supporters at the venues for their rallies. On December 13, 2015 Amama Mbabazi’s supporters severely beat up Museveni’s supporters who were provoking at their rally in Ntumgamo. The Inspector General of Police (IGP) flew in a helicopter to evacuate Museveni’s supporters and take them to Mbarara hospital for better treatment.

The interesting bit is that police for the first time used the helicopter to take people, who pass for trouble causers and criminals, to get better treatment.  Uganda roads are a real slaughter house. The practice is to dump the accident victims on the Police pick ups and later dump them in Mulago hospital. No ambulances ever appear on such occasions. 

Engineer Badru Kiggundu, Chairman of the INDEPENDENT Electoral Commission, has never come out to condemn these provocations. Like the Police Force, Kiggundu is ever on the look out for mistakes by the Opposition and then trumpets that. Kiggundu’s case is understandable: the Supreme Court declared him incompetent and unfit for that position.

Incompetence is a hallmark of Ugandan institutions under Museveni’s rule. After the greatest dehumanization of the people of Northern Uganda by subjecting them to filthy Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camps for over twenty years, the money meant for their rehabilitation and resuscitation was stolen with the attitude of what will you do. It was a cruel statement of: you do not deserve this either.

The Permanent Secretary (PS) is the accounting officer of the Ministry. This means that Pius Bigirimana was the very first suspect and culprit in all this but he was never charged, not even mentioned in this scam that rocked the Prime Minister’s Office. But after sacrificing poor Kazinda, president Museveni resorted to the Consolidated Fund to further cover up the scam by refunding the stolen billions to the donors agitating for accountability and threatening sanctions.

But how can Bigirimana, the accounting officer, again be the whistleblower? This can only happen if he is an accomplice or a good for nothing lot. For Museveni, Ugandans are too dense to comprehend this and therefore he is qualified to rule for life.

If there is another custodian, after the victims themselves, of the atrocities committed against the people in Northern Uganda by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rebels and the government soldiers, then it is Human Rights Watch. Human rights Watch made periodical reports about the dehumanizing treatment of the people in the North which ably indicate that the rebels and government all have a case to answer.

President Museveni added insult to humiliation by refusing to honour the people’s desire to have Dominic Ongwen, the former LRA rebel commander, subjected to their cultural rituals and be welcomed back into society. Museveni insisted that Ongwen be sent to the International Criminal Court “to face justice.”

Up to now, the people maintain that what is most important to them is burying the hatchet and move on. They continue to look at the capture of Dominic Ongwen as an opportunity to build bridges of peace, forgiveness, love and mercy. They do not want to be enslaved by the over two decades of atrocities meted out on them.  But even if government does not apologise for turning against its own people, the people deep in their hearts know that indeed it savagely preyed on them.

It seems the only hope of having a meaningful reconstruction of Northern Uganda will be during the post Museveni era. But for the people of Northern Uganda to realise this, they have to use the ballot to state categorically that they have had enough of Museveni’s insults and humiliations  and that it is time for some one else to help them realise their dreams of moving on.

In Buganda the cause for jubilation during the campaign trail has so far been Court’s declaration that government had no justified power to bar the Kabaka, Ronald Muwenda Mutebi II, from visiting his County of Bugerere.

Buganda played a pivotal role in bringing Museveni to power in 1986; it virtually sacrificed its very self but it has as well paid the heaviest price under Museveni’s rule. The generally held view is that Museveni had, and has indeed implemented it, a well crafted plan to destroy Buganda. The Sabanyala and Sabaluli are all makings of Museveni to weaken and destroy Buganda’s unity, cohesion, development and dominance.

Luweero was Buganda’s economic power base and Museveni used it as his base for the five-year bloody guerrilla war that brought him to state power. He deliberately refused to reconstruct it despite the billions of shillings purportedly spent in the guise of putting the area back on its feet.

Government continues to strangle Buganda economically by underfunding areas like agriculture which are crucial to resuscitating its economic power. The over twenty billion shillings government owes Buganda in rent arrears is not forthcoming while billions continue to disappear under dubious donations and repayments to companies belonging to the regime’s cronies.

Worse still, Buganda’s forest cover, wetlands and other water bodies are being destroyed at an alarming rate not witnessed in any other part of the country. Mabira tropical forest reserve, L. Victoria, River Ssezibwa, Lubigi swamp and Bujuuko forest have not been spared, to mention a few.

Fortunately Buganda has not yet lost her fighting spirit even though some elders grow old without growing in wisdom. The earlier Buganda mobilised her subjects to vote for a regime change the better for her and the country at large.

After the granaries disappeared from Eastern Uganda, the region became the granary for poverty in Uganda. Jinja town is, under Museveni, the ghost of the industrial heart of the country that it used to be. If one wants to see the effects of thirty years of Museveni’s rule then Jinja is the town to visit. The thousands of bicycles would have been a beauty if they were transporting people to work in the industries and factories; but they spend the day searching for passengers and that turns them into a curse.

Shops along the sleepy main street are stocked with sweet bananas and sisal ropes! And there is no electricity which is generated a stone throw away! Thirty years of oppressive and suppressive rule can be destructive more so if leaders at the different levels are equally selfish, short sighted and are the type of backyard characters.

These backyard characters, that have nothing to lose, have compounded Uganda’s demise as they battle with their past and want to prove to everyone that they have reached.

There can be no other reason- other than this- why the East which has very fertile soils and grows cash crops like groundnuts, maize, tobacco, sim-sim, sorghum, oranges and mangoes should wallow in abject poverty to the extent of being home to primitive age illnesses like jiggers. What a shame for a man who has been president for thirty years to hunger for recognition as the one who helped  broker the election of the traditional leader- the Kyabazinga! But what are you doing about the abject poverty and school drop out?

Cultural leaders, worth their status, are all confounded by the levels of poverty and unemployment among their people. Government that squeezes the last shilling from them, in the guise of taxation, long transformed into a leach! It no longer overseas the national funds and resources on their behalf; it is preoccupied with enriching family members and cronies.

Learning about the oil deposits in the Western region, goons used their close ties with government and embarked on a land-grabbing spree turning ordinary folk into refugees in their own country. On many occasions, Museveni has got the guts to publicly declare that the oil is his! It is no longer a question as to whether or not the treasure is a curse; indeed it is, long before the actual exploration has kicked off. Libya’s former strongman, the late Muamar Ghadaffi had also turned the country’s oil into his personal property. Museveni should consult him on where he left it all.

As the agreements are being signed under the cover of darkness, the wetlands, forests, wildlife and natural water bodies are destined for extinction.

President Museveni has also selfishly and dangerously pitted the West against the rest of the country. With 90% of government positions, as well as key institutions, in the firm grip of people from Western Uganda, the region is looked at with anger and hatred.

Each region has had its unique share of the tribulations of Museveni’s thirty-year dictatorship but some issues are so similar that they are a uniting factor in the search for a new beginning. Consider the rotten health system, the lack of meaningful employment, the institutional failure and the environmental degradation. All regions are yearning for a change of government so as to have hope in the future.

Like wise, all the regions have witnessed and tasted the land-grabbing spree which has turned thousands of Ugandans into refugees in their own country. To the contrary, refugees have become the de facto owners of Uganda.

The harmony that once existed among different communities has become so poisoned that it looks almost impossible for those relationships to be restored. It will require a trusted, charismatic leader to get Uganda stand again as one country pursuing the dignity, progress and happiness of all irrespective of ethnicity, political affiliation or background. 

The February 2016 elections are taking place 71 days after Pope Francis visited Uganda. The Pope, in all his messages at Entebe state house, Munyonyo and Namugongo Martyrs’ shrines, Kololo airstrip, Nalukolongo Charity home and Lubaga Cathedral, kept urging Ugandans to work for the good of others.

The Pope’s visit was necessitated by, among other reasons, the Golden jubilee celebrations of the Canonisation of the 22 Catholic Uganda Martyrs. These Martyrs were at the fore front of fighting dictatorship and bad governance which are key impediments to the service of God. They used their own blood.

When Museveni was waging the five-year bloody guerrilla war, he claimed to be fighting bad governance, dictatorship, oppression and other vices that are of the same feather with lust for power. Museveni has proved a total flop at this and is far worse than any of the previous leaders he fondly refers to as pigs. After thirty uninterrupted years at the helm, Museveni cannot have any genuine excuse for the dismal performance.

 Museveni’s rhetoric has been put to test and found devoid of substance. While he is a lucky man; not many ever get all those years, all the excuses he tries to bring forward simply betray him exposing his hypocrisy and non performance.

On February 18, 2016 Ugandans should emulate the Martyrs in fighting dictatorship and bad governance by casting their vote against Museveni. It is time to elect leaders who not only talk but act justice and peace, rule of law and order, fairness, trust and integrity so that the country embarks on a journey that will bring about sustainable peace and development for all Ugandans. The old man has failed to make the decision to quit himself; Ugandans should take it for him. This will help restore hope in the populace and save the country from total collapse.