{UAH} Pojim/WBK: The Ugandan election will not go down well with latte - Comment
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The Ugandan election will not go down well with latte
For a moment there, it looked like finally the Uganda opposition would offer President Yoweri Museveni a united challenge to his 30-year rule in elections next year.
In the broadest coalition they had ever crafted, they formed The Democratic Alliance (TDA) and agreed to rally behind one candidate.
Then two things happened. The main opposition party, Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), held an unusually good-natured primary to pick its presidential flag-bearer.
It's thick-skinned and fearless former president, Kizza Besigye, who had taken on Museveni in three scrappy contests for the presidency in the past and lost, but had retired from politics, bounced back and handily defeated FDC's new leader Muntu Mugisha.
If angels voted, they would vote for Muntu. Centrist, even-handed, and mild-mannered, he has an old-fashioned respect for the rules.
Secondly, the falling out between ex-prime minister and ruling party enforcer Amama Mbabazi and the president was completed when all avenues for him to challenge Museveni were closed off.
Mbabazi struck out as an independent candidate, and was welcomed into the TDA fold. There was early excitement in TDA about him. Several saw him as having crucial links to the regime apparatus that could help the opposition protect their votes from being stolen. Also, he is deep pocketed and would bring resources.
Over days of difficult discussion, the TDA wrestled with the choice between Besigye and Mbabazi.
In the end, they failed, announcing that both men would run — against each other and against Museveni. It emerged that the veterans of democratic struggle against Museveni had flatly rejected Mbabazi.
They saw him as having come too late to the party, and the torment they had endured at his hands as Museveni's hatchet man was too fresh to forgive.
But the TDA collapse told a deeper and, ultimately, more important, story. It's that the longer a ruler and his party dominate power like Museveni and the NRM have done, and resort to winning elections by fraud, the more the opposition politicians and parties that stand up to them become their mirror image.
In the ruling party, the moderates who prefer accommodation of the opposition, honest polls, and term limits, eventually get shunted aside. And with every election, the thuggish and hard-line elements ascend.
In a place like Uganda, where the opposition is shamelessly brutalised and cheated, it is men like Besigye who thrive. Just like in the ruling party, the opposition moderates fall by the roadside. Indeed, Museveni himself rose to power by going to the extreme that few in the opposition of his time were willing to go — taking up arms.
Besigye has a fanatic following. They are the guys who are willing to throw stones back at riot police. The ones who endure beatings, torture, and prison.
When the elections come, and Museveni lets his dogs out, they are the ones who will stand their ground. The middle-of-the-road latte swigging and tweeting crowd who want Muntu as president, will be following proceedings on their TVs in the safety of their homes.
This is a modern clash out of the film 300. Besigye has always been the leader of the Spartans, and Museveni chief of the Persians. There is no room for angels, or Johnny Come Latelys.
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