{UAH} THIS IS WHY BETTY KAMYA BESIGYE AND MUNTONYERA MUST GO WITH THE MOVEMENT

Toppling a dictator is only the first step in establishing a free society. The next step is dismantling the dictatorship itself. It is like having a bad driver and a bad vehicle. After tossing out the bad driver, the bad vehicle itself must be fixed.

Dismantling the dictatorship requires establishing intellectual freedom, political pluralism, revamping the constitution, INSTITUTIONAL REFORM and lastly economic reform -- in that order.Most critical are constitutional and institutional reform since all dictators write constitutions that concentrate enormous powers in their hands and then pack all key state institutions with their cronies, kinsmen and supporters.

When the dictator is ousted, the constitution must be revised and those state institutions must also be cleansed. Failure to do so may transform the liberator into a new dictator (crocodile liberator) with enormous powers or allow the nomenklatura (remnants/supporters of the old regime) to sabotage the revolution or mount a comeback. In far too many countries, the second step is either not attempted or botched, allowing the return of authoritarianism http://nyti.ms/Ip9ARd

Such was the case in many African countries after independence. The colonial infidels were driven away but the authoritarian colonial state was not dismantled, allowing new dictators to emerge. Independence was in name only where one set of masters (white colonialists) was replaced by another set (black neo-colonialists) and the oppression and exploitation of the African people continued unabated.

That mistake was repeated in country after country throughout the decades with dictators being ousted WITHOUT the dictatorship being dismantled or the vehicle fixed. This gave rise to the African saying: “We struggle very hard to remove one cockroach from power and the next rat comes to do the same thing. Haba!” From cockroach to rat: Zimbabwe (from Ian Smith to Robert Mugabe); Ethiopia (from Mangistu Haile Mariam to Meles Zenawi), Liberia (from General Samel Doe to Charles Taylor), Uganda (from Milton Obote to Yoweri Museveni), Egypt (from Mubarak to Morsi and now al-Sisi), etc. In most African countries, we still haven’t fixed the bad vehicle; we just keep changing the drivers.

Outside Africa, thorough INSTITUTIONAL reform was not undertaken, allowing the nomenklatura (or remnants/supporters of the old regime) to stage a comeback. They tried to seize power from Mikhail Gorbachev on August 19, 1991. The coup failed but eventually they clawed their way back to power in the person of Vladimir Putin and his United Russia party, which Gorbachev dismissed as “a bad copy of the Soviet Communist Party.” http://bit.ly/IUPAdi

Elsewhere in Eastern Europe the flower revolutions wilted: The Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan (under Kurmanbek Bakiyev); the Rose Revolution in Georgia (under Mikhail Saakashvili) and the Orange Revolution in Ukraine (under Viktor Yanukovich) and has now taken a turn for the worse. The revolutions in Philippines (1986) and Indonesia (1998) suffered similar fates: reversals due to lack of institutional reform. In Egypt, the feloulahs (remnants of the Mubarak regime clawed their way back to power because the institutions were not cleansed of them http://tiny.cc/8vy2bx

George Ayittey,
Washington, DC

 

            Thé Mulindwas Communication Group
"With Yoweri Museveni and Dr. Kiiza Besigye Uganda is in anarchy"
           Kuungana Mulindwa Mawasiliano Kikundi
"Pamoja na Yoweri Museveni na Dk. Kiiza Besigye Uganda ni katika machafuko"