{UAH} Where Politics Stops, War Begins.Who is ready to take m7 out

President Yoweri Museveni should have remembered that  Where Politics Stops, War Begins as NRM pushed for the Impeachment of Lord Mayor Erias Lukwago

By Fred Daka Kamwada

There is a popular saying that where politics stops, war begins.  You would expect that President Museveni is well versed with this maxim given the fact that he applied it practically in 1980 when the UPC government interfered with the politics by rigging the national elections and war became inevitable.

The issue of democracy became the corner stone of the ten point program which laid the foundation for President Museveni's bush war struggle. But I sometimes wonder whether the NRM machinery has ever internalized the meaning of the democracy they fought for.

Comedy  

The comical removal of the Kampala Mayor Lord Erias Lukwago from office has left some of us not only dumb stuck but also confused as to whether democracy still exists in this country.

Some of us who believe so much in logic and rationality of issues were wondering why the NRM government spent precious time and tax payers' money to dislodge a ceremonial mayor!

 Why bother to challenge someone without executive powers?

Was the KCCA act which disempowered the mayor and vested all the powers in the executive director not enough to satiate the appetites of the political engineering designed to undermine the former? These and many more questions give an insight into the bleak future that the NRM is about to face if it continues to make such mistakes.

Some of us followed the circus of disenfranchising the Kampala electorate (read ejecting Lukwago from his mayoral seat) with some little bit of hope that it would die down. We also thought that President Museveni was an innocent party to whatever comedy was going on at city hall.

But our fears (about President Museveni's culpability) were confirmed when he hosted the Kampala city councilors at State House and took photographs and had a hearty laugh with them. It was one hell of a shocker! How low can we get in playing dirty politics?

Legal versus Right

Of course, some NRM gurus will argue that the whole process went through a legal procedure and that the tribunal was officially permitted and the facts laid before it were impeccable, blah-blah.

But wait a minute! Apartheid policy which segregated black Africans in their own motherland had all the legal backing in form of laws and all.  But was it right?

Is it logically fair to say that a mayor without executive powers to even put a bulb on the Kampala streets is found to be incompetent?  How do you judge incompetency for someone who is ceremonial?

Of course one will argue that even within the confines of a ceremonial mayor, he had some tasks to undertake. Fine! Even a child with a very tired brain cannot comprehend such a move (of removing a leader with ceremonial duties).

If you were to institute a tribunal on every Ugandan in top leadership positions, how many would survive?

Remember that at one time there was a move by some MPs led by the fiery Hon Odonga 0tto to impeach President Museveni. And they had all the reasons, which if subjected to scrutiny by a competent tribunal would lead to the removal of the president from power because the grounds were very well founded on sound reasons. But given the circumstances and the fact that man is an imperfect creature, you sometimes ignore calls for radical decisions like impeachment and tribunals.

I have read Section 12 of the KCCA Act which provides that if the tribunal determines that there is a prima facie case for the removal of the Lord Mayor, the office bearer may be removed from office by a resolution of the authority.

If the resolution is passed with support of votes of not less than two-thirds majority of all the members of the authority, the Lord Mayor or deputy Lord Mayor ceases to hold the office.

Disenfranchising Ugandans

But this man was elected with a clear majority. The figures from the electoral commission read that Lukwago was elected with 229,325 votes, representing 64% of the total votes cast followed by National Resistance Movement flag bearer Peter Sematimba with 119,015 votes representing 33%.

When you use councilors who got less than a quarter of the total votes that Lukwago got to remove him from office, doesn't that tantamount to the disenfranchisement of the people? President Museveni went to the bush purportedly to fight for democracy. How does he explain this development where an elected leader is removed through undemocratic means?

Valuing Ugandans

I don't think that the NRM values Ugandans anymore. It's clear that we are taken for granted or what the Swahili would term as mavi ya kuku. That's why they do things without assessing the consequences because they know that nothing can happen to their long stay in power.

Afterall they know how to manipulate elections and how to deal with armed insurrections but I laugh at such delusional misconceptions.  Experience shows that regimes usually collapse unexpectedly at their strongest points.

Case in point is the Obote 1 government of the 60s which was so powerful in 1969 as the only party in Uganda and had members of all the other parties defecting to it but it unexpectedly lost power just two years later in 1971 to an illiterate officer.

Even Col Muamar Gaddafi lost power when he was at his most powerful heights. By the time of his fall, Gaddafi was enjoying the trust of everyone in the international community, had an elite force believed to be the best in Africa but was picked from the sewers like a frog!

So the NRM sycophants who think that they cannot lose power should play safe with more just polices and decisions. The shenanigans will not help their cause.

The pranks they have played on Lukwago look simple but they will not be forgotten by right thinking Ugandans.

Cost-Benefit Analysis

Which party has benefited from the Lukwago censure?

The people who engineered this have grossly misled President Museveni; this was one of the most childish moves engineered by the NRM.

Lukwago was not supposed to be fought beyond what was done with the KCCA act. It was wiser to ignore him than to engage him in all sorts of childish games. It's obvious that the NRM has lost all forms of credibility and cannot champions the democratic cause anymore.

On the other hand, the opposition has gained the much needed justification to push the regime change agenda with much gusto.

Way Forward

They say that if you want a liar to be exposed, you give him as much space as possible. Likewise, if I was Lukwago, I would let the events play out without even staging a demo. 

On the other hand, if I was in NRM I would advise the Kampala councilors to abstain from removing Lukwago from office just for the sake of addressing an injustice.

But being the banana republic that we are, more drama is set to unfold.  There are suggestions that the councilors will elect a mayor from the already existing  division chairmen.

But remember where politics stops war begins. The people of Uganda and Kampala in particular must be psychologically at war with the NRM right now. If there is fairness, then mayoral elections should staged.

I rest my case

http://investigator.co.ug/politics/2013-08-21-12-16-49/opinions/1232-lukwago%E2%80%99s-ousting.html

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