{UAH} Pojim/WBK: Reflections on top three candidates

http://www.observer.ug/viewpoint/41881-reflections-on-top-three-candidates

Reflections on top three candidates

Written by MOSES KHISA

Political jockeying and melodrama were on full show in 2015, and will climax next month.

No one knows, for sure, how all will finally end after polling day on February 18. But as the polling day draws closer, many Ugandans will be asking who to vote for and why.

The leading challengers are three eminent individuals and I will list them in the order of their political fortunes if we had a level playing field and free, fair, and credible electoral processes.

First is opposition veteran Col Kizza Besigye who made a stunning return to win the race of flag bearer for the main opposition party, the Forum for Democratic Change, beating party president Mugisha Muntu.

Many thought this was Maj Gen Muntu's time to get a shot at the nation's topmost job, especially after Dr Besigye had announced that he would not participate in a sham election organized and supervised by the very person he seeks to defeat – Gen Yoweri Museveni. 

Second is long-serving regime handler John Patrick Amama Mbabazi, who, after months of intense speculation and evasive comments, finally announced in June that he would vie for the chairmanship of the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM), a largely-nonexistent political party yet ironically widely sought after by political merchants bidding for political office.

Quite curiously, Mbabazi chickened out of challenging Museveni for the NRM chairmanship, in the process inadvertently adding his seal of approval on the sole candidate project.

Third is, of course, a man who is increasingly becoming our life-president, General Yoweri Museveni, who is deluded to believe everybody else is a joker and only he seriously knows how to manage Uganda; and all his opponents are liars with only he having an exclusive reservoir of the truth about the country.

Needless to say, key aspects of the lies that Museveni accuses his opponents of peddling relate to the decrepit state of social services, including a shambolic health sector, a thin and shallow road network around the country, and an appalling education system.

None of the three leading men seeking to occupy State House has yet to provide a persuasive and comprehensive plan of tackling Uganda's endemic socioeconomic problems.

Museveni has run out of fresh and sound ideas. Thus, he has for the most part been repeating his pet subject of constructing roads, as if any sensible person doesn't know the appalling state of Uganda's roads.

There are whole districts in our country that have not even an inch of tarmac. So, the issue is not about promising tarmacking roads. Any government worth its name is hired to do that job.

The real task before General Museveni is running a competent and efficient government that can provide critical public goods and services. And on this account, Museveni's track record is so poor that he has no case to make.

Amama Mbabazi, until last year considered Museveni's closest and most powerful handler, on his part, has toyed with a vague and uninspiring 'Go Forward' message. He harked back to the achievements of the NRM and made an insipid case for the need to peacefully transfer power from Museveni to himself!

But for many Ugandans unhappy with the NRM regime and Museveni's grip on power, there is not much to go forward with; there is, rather, an overarching desire for a radical break and change, to slug out the mess and decay wrought by three decades of corrupt rule, nepotism, and collapse of the public spirit.

By remaining blind to the dire state of affairs in the country and the need to return to the drawing board and forge a new start for the country, Mbabazi cannot represent the change that many Ugandans are eagerly yearning for.

The decisive stance taken by Dr Besigye makes him the more preferred change-candidate. His consistency in resisting the NRM misrule and challenging Museveni to the fullest, courageously telling our militarily-burly authoritarian ruler that we deserve better, has endeared Besigye to many.

Yet Besigye's message of returning power to the people and the campaign of defiance, not compliance, are hardly convincing to skeptics. For starters, in our economically-impoverished country and socially-backward society, the root of the problem is not so much that the masses are necessarily politically-powerless.

Giving power back to the people, whatever that may mean in practice, so as to bring about economic empowerment and social consciousness is putting the cart before the horse.

In fact, part of Museveni's ruling strategy has hinged on giving the masses a false sense of political empowerment to mask the socioeconomic problems they face, as he keeps a grip on power.

What is more, Dr Besigye's "defiance not compliance" message is a catchy slogan but whose actual practical potential to bring about the change we desire is difficult to discern. What exactly is being defied and to what end?

As things stand now, there is a possibility that many Ugandans will stay away from the February 18 polls, not only because the three top candidates are all short on why voters should cast their vote but, perhaps more importantly, because of a huge credibility deficit in the entire electoral process under an electoral commission that is only independent in name.
moses.khisa@gmail.com
 The author is a PhD candidate and teaching assistant at the department of Political Science, Northwestern University, USA.

Reflections on top three candidates

http://www.observer.ug/viewpoint/41881-reflections-on-top-three-candidates

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