{UAH} ODOBO ON ASSASSINATION OF BURUNDI'S BESIGYE!

''On the day of the attempted Burundi coup, I sat next to Burundi army colonel on a flight from Nairobi to Dar. News of the coup had just come in as we sat in the Nairobi airport lounge at about 2pm so not much details of the putsch was known to me. Naturally we got talking after we introduced ourselves to each other. He was so excited you could tell something good had happened to him. Anyhow he told me a few things about how the coup was planned in general terms. He told of a meeting they had the previous night after Nkurunzinza confirmed that he would travel to Dar es Salaam for an EAC heads of state meeting. The plotters agreed that it was the right time to strike because then they would not have to kill Nkurunzinza; they did not want anymore bloodshed.

He also said a few generals in the army supported Nkurunzinza but they were engaging them in talks so they see that the destiny of the country is bigger than Nkurunzinza. He also said they were going to call civil society leaders and other stakeholders to create a transitional leadership and to arrange elections within a year.
I was happy with the development in Burundi and congratulated the Burundi army for acting in the country's best interests by not siding with a tyrant who wanted to disregard the people's will by overstaying in power like many others in the region.

Now this morning, I get the sad news of the killing of the opposition leader outside his home in Bujumbura. The Nkurunzinza loyalist troops, militia etc are no doubt responsible for his killing. If the coup plotters did not think of killing the president and his loyal generals which they could have done, they should the government kill a man who has only led peaceful protests and insisited that the letter of the law be read together with the spirit of it!
For this and other civillian killings over the last few weeks, it is my prayer that Nkurunzinza finds himself next to Laurent Gbagbo of Ivory Coast. Amen''----Odoobo Charles Bichachi

What the pro-Nkurunziza forces/elements are doing is to intimidate those they see as impediments to his 'grand presidential project'. African governments detest democracy and clean governance because if these hold, you cannot manipulate the constitution and elections and reign perpetually. These are not issues on which we should spend time moralizing. All pro-democracy forces wherever they are should learn and adopt survival methods and how to win over the masses to rise to the occasion at the right opportunity. For the benefit of those who had not been born then, in 1979, the Shah of Iran was finally asked by the army generals to leave power after black-veiled women sat on the streets of Tehran and refused to budge even in the face of the army tanks facing them. That is what people's power means.
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H.OGWAPITI
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"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that  we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic  and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."
---Theodore Roosevelt

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