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Museveni says five-year terms are a joke; no-one’s laughing

Wednesday December 13 2017
M7 7yrs

Uganda's president Yoweri Museveni. By the end of his current term he will have been president for 35 years. PHOTO FILE | NATION

By FREDRICK GOLOOBA-MUTEBI

According to media reports, President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda believes that limiting a sitting president to two five-year terms, as once enshrined in his country’s Constitution, is a joke.

Well, we have known about his dislike for term limits for a while now. It was he after all who mobilised MPs for their removal from the Constitution more than 10 years ago, paving the way for him to run for election every five years so long as he remained within the age limit.

Which is why by the end of his current term he will have been president for 35 years, something well beyond what anyone who was around when he seized power all those years ago would have envisaged.

And as is now certain, he has been quietly engineering moves to remove the only obstacle to his plans: The article in the Constitution that would bar him from running again on grounds of his age.

He will be 77 years old when Ugandans go to the polls again. Left untouched, article 102b of the Constitution, which currently does not allow anyone below the age of 35 and or above the age of 75 to run, would have ensured he goes home to spend more time with his sizeable herd of cows.

Mobilisation

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Although so-called democracy-seeking forces have mobilised strongly against these moves in recent months, all indications are they have run out of steam. Always a master at playing the long game, Museveni will in all likelihood get what he wants.

But even before he secures that objective, he has pulled another rabbit out of his hat. He now says a seven-year term, “with or without term limits” is better for “some of these young countries” because it allows more time to “solve the problems of the people”.

It may be too early to tell with certainty where he wants to go with his new discovery. By the time you read this, however, the chances are that his opponents and critics will have savaged him mercilessly for this “thinking aloud,” convinced that it is another gambit calculated to feed what they say is his insatiable hunger for power.

Others, though, admittedly very few, may prefer to look back over the years and try to relate his new views to his personal history and ambitions.

Today, perceptive analysts take the view that the 1980 elections, which allegedly forced him to start the war that brought him to power, were merely the opportunity he needed to become president using violence, which he believes is an important tool for pursuing political objectives.

It is also important not to forget or disregard certain things he has said a few times in recent years. One has been that being in power for a long time is not a bad thing, that in his case it has equipped him with some necessary experience. Then there is the one about leadership being about having a vision, not being a leader for its own sake.

“Not a politician”

It is not as if these are long-held beliefs. For example, in his early days as Uganda’s new leader, he declared his intention to stay in power for only four years, after which he would hand over to someone else, apparently because he was “not a politician” but a revolutionary.

Some now say he was merely playing games; that he never intended to leave. It is also plausible that at the time, he was merely being a young and idealistic 30-something-year-old without much of an idea what being president was about or felt like.

And then, as he says, he acquired experience as he went along, learnt things he previously did not know, all of which combined to make him begin to believe that it was actually good, for him or for the country, if he stayed put. And this is where it all links up with the “vision” thing.

Messianic view

As this column has said before, President Museveni has a messianic view of himself. And some people around him also believe he is the best thing that ever happened to Uganda, that in his absence no one can manage.

We could argue about that until the proverbial cows come home. Perhaps what is more important is to think about what this implies in terms of the country’s politics in general and the political direction it may take.

It simply means that they are not prepared to countenance anyone else leading the country, provided he is happy to offer himself and as long as his continued stay can somehow be engineered.

They will argue that longevity in power is not an issue, “as long as the president is performing” and as long as “people still want him.” Now here is where it gets really slippery.

The slipperiness lies mainly in pushing an argument they are not willing to subject to popular debate to generate consensus, even within their own party.

What “performing” means, and therefore what the usefulness to Uganda and Ugandans of his continued stay boils down to, is something they are happy to keep to themselves. And now that five-year terms have become “a joke,” soon enough they could come under sustained attack but again without popular consultation.

Frederick Golooba-Mutebi is a Kampala- and Kigali-based researcher and writer on politics and public affairs. E-mail: [email protected]

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