[UAH] Muhoozi: Ugandans will decide; Ugandans: Yeah, right
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10:39 AM |
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On June 24, Uganda's Daily Monitor newspaper carried a story in which Brigadier Muhoozi Kainerugaba — the man at the centre of allegations that his father, President Yoweri Museveni, is building a political monarchy — finally broke his silence on the matter.
Predictably, he denied the existence of any plot or "project" to parachute him into the country's highest office.
In a prepared statement, he reminded those who might have forgotten, that "Uganda is not a monarchy where leadership is passed on from father to son". He emphasised: "The power to choose how Uganda is governed lies with Ugandans and not a single individual."
Conveying the message on his behalf, the spokesman of the Special Forces which he commands, Captain Edson Kwesiga, added: "He is a Ugandan who qualifies to stand for any elective position of his choice" and rounded off: "This would require him to retire from the army, offer himself to the electorate who would either vote him in or choose not to."
That, indeed, is how things would be if he decided to contest and everything went according to the law as we know it.
Millions of Ugandans know that there are laws governing how things such as succession to the presidency are supposed to be handled. However, the tenor of conversations about the subject suggests the same Ugandans have decided that in his case things would not be as straightforward.
The brigadier himself has remarkably dismissed the "so-called Muhoozi Project" as "a people's creation."
Why though would people create it and why do other people believe it or take it seriously? It seems they simply do not trust the government and those they suspect of possible involvement in "engineering" the succession. There are good reasons for this.
There are, for example, the persistent questions about his recruitment into the army and whether it was in line with established procedures.
And then his fast-track promotion and rise to one of the military's most eminent positions. There is also the history of elections in Uganda and of constitutional amendments. All of them have significantly eroded the trust people had in the politicians and governments that preside over them.
Lest we think it is only ordinary Ugandans who don't trust the government or the people who run it, here are some examples of how Uganda's politicians view each other, the government, and its institutions.
Let's start with Major-General David Sejusa, the man who blew the lid off the alleged Muhoozi Project. It is difficult to imagine he would have acted the way he did if he trusted the government he served, its institutions, and those in charge.
It wasn't the first time he was displaying such mistrust, either. When he first fell out with the government and resigned from the army well over a decade ago, the media reported him living in constant fear of being killed.
The revelation sounded odd, as it suggested he knew that killing was the government's preferred tool for dealing with dissenters. Being a senior officer, those listening simply thought, "He must know what he's talking about".
Some of the most riveting stories about the government's dark side have been about poison and poisoning. Over the past two decades, it has become almost customary for politicians who fall foul of the law and get locked up to refuse to eat prison food.
It does not matter whether they are "opposition" or not. They will spend days on empty stomachs rather than risk ingesting anything not prepared by people they trust.
While none of them has stated when it is they discovered that people get poisoned while jail, they have sown fear and mistrust of the government in the minds of ordinary folk. At one time, a notable personality even had the courage to allege that the government had imported an assortment of poisons targeted at opposition politicians.
It all smacked of politics in Uganda being reduced to a sport for murderers.
Leaving poison aside, internal elections in Uganda's political parties show how people we imagine to be close friends and colleagues mistrust each other. Contestants who lose cry foul and accuse rivals of rigging and bribery.
The best stories of rigging often come from Uganda's ruling party, the National Resistance Movement. Angered by malpractice, senior officials, including ministers, complain bitterly about vote stealing by their rivals. It is not clear why on earth they work with people whose honesty they cannot count on.
Stories from opposition parties some Ugandans would like to think will free them from the dishonesty of the sitting government, offer no comfort. As I write, almost all of them risk falling apart because the results of their internal leadership contests were tainted by allegations of vote rigging.
We know, also, why they don't work together: They do not trust each other. Similarly, many Ugandans who believe that Kainerugaba could one day rule them do so not because they want him to, but because they trust neither his father nor the government, or its institutions.
Frederick Golooba-Mutebi is a Kampala- and Kigali-based researcher and writer on politics and public affairs. E-mail: fgmutebi@yahoo.com
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