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Somehow no-party, multiparty under Museveni are the same

Thursday April 26 2018
ug parl

Ugandan Parliament Speaker Rebecca Kadaga (C) presides over the plenary session at The Ugandan Parliament in Kampala on September 27, 2017. Nothing has changed in 30 years. PHOTO | AFP

By FREDRICK GOLOOBA-MUTEBI

The grass is always greener on the other side,” is a common phrase. It captures the state of mind many people live in because somehow their lives are not quite what they should be. Which is why they wish they were somewhere or someone else, and why they keep complaining about how awful things are.

Of course, dissatisfaction with one’s current circumstances can also be a powerful source of motivation to achieve more and do better and live better.

There are limits, however, and in Africa, the political sphere is one arena where changing one’s circumstances is not quite as easy and straightforward as it can be in the personal sphere where if one works hard and remains focused, the sky can be the limit, to borrow the old cliche.

That changing the political context one inhabits can be daunting has been demonstrated often in Africa where presidential longevity has been a source of great frustration for people in countries whose leaders won’t leave power easily, no matter what their compatriots do or say.

In the 1970s, Ugandans had a taste of this under the rule of self-declared Conqueror of the British Empire (CBE), Gen Idi Amin.

So fed up were they with him and his government that for years they wished something would happen to bring about the change they desired. It was not the kind of wish one verbalised in public or to just anyone.

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Change

As a child I heard many such conversations, but only among close friends and relatives. Thanks to Julius Nyerere of Tanzania and groups of determined Ugandan insurgents, Amin was forced out. And then it all looked as if people had arrived where the grass was greener.

But the green grass turned out to have been an illusion. Soon enough the country descended into such chaos that many wondered if God had forgotten what had once been the “Pearl of Africa.” We did come to another patch of green once again, seven years after Amin had been ousted.

Under President Yoweri Museveni’s three decades, some would argue, the patch has turned rather yellow. Others would beg to differ, but clearly there is a palpable mood of “we want change” among many Ugandans.

There are two things here. One is that the man himself as well as his party and supporters are not thinking of change. The other is that those looking for change or seeking to bring it about simply don’t know what to do to bring it about, or are ill equipped to do so.

I was interested enough to listen to a video clip a few days ago, in which a British member of parliament was seeking assurance from the UK government that, during the recent Commonwealth Summit in London, they would “give a message” to Museveni that “good governance includes leaving office.”

Multiparty politics

It caused a nice storm on social media, but that’s not what struck me. What did was that when Ugandans pushing for a return to multiparty politics in the 1990s and early 2000s were agitating for “opening up political space,” the UK was one of Uganda’s development partners that, at the time, were backing up those demands.

There is little doubt that both the development partners and local multiparty advocates had their hearts in the right place. Museveni had been in power for almost 20 years. It was time, they argued, that politics in Uganda became truly competitive, after all, political competition is what democracy is about, as it gives people choices from which to pick those they want to entrust with authority and power.

No doubt, they saw the no-party system as having run its course, and the country and Ugandans as needing something fresh.

It would have been nearly impossible to convince them that multiparty politics might not be the greener grass they were imagining on the other side.

Nearly two decades after no-party politics ended and multiparty competition returned, it is clear that it has not been the magic bullet it was imagined to be.

First, it has done nothing to diminish Museveni’s dominance and that of his would-be political party, the National Resistance Movement.

Second, it has done nothing to cure the damage inflicted on the idea of party politics by 20 years of no-party politics, during which Ugandans learnt that political competition without political parties or outside a political party framework was possible.

On the contrary, the restoration of party politics seems to have driven Museveni to the conclusion that, to keep his rivals and those of his NRM at bay, there should be no limit to the range of tools to be used.

Which explains the occasional targeted violence directed at parties and individuals seen as most threatening; the strategic use of state institutions for political purposes; occasional disregard for the law, even court rulings; and the recruiting of some of the best talent political parties have, into the NRM.

Perhaps the greatest tool in his arsenal is cash. Few, even among his worst enemies, are able to resist the lure of money. It is doubtful that in their idealism, advocates of multiparty competition foresaw this. But now we know that the grass beyond no-party politics simply wasn’t that green.

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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