{UAH} Allan/Pojim/WBK: Opposition or NRM, we go to the same (horrible) hospitals - Comment

http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/OpEd/comment/Opposition-or-NRM--we-go-to-the-same-horrible-hospitals-/-/434750/3115000/-/138pwg9z/-/index.html

Opposition or NRM, we go to the same (horrible) hospitals

Even as the politicians or at least some of them are now before the courts of law trying to settle the question of who won Uganda's recent presidential election and persuade the judges that the results as they currently stand be upheld or annulled and the winner sworn in or a rerun declared, tensions continue to simmer beneath the apparent calm.

Not one to take chances on matters of security, President Yoweri Museveni, whose victory has come in for questioning and remains the subject of much angry debate, has placed the security forces on alert.

Just in case some of his rivals decide to emulate his conduct after the disputed 1980 election that saw him and his allies take matters into their own hands and launch an insurgency, military detachments have been strategically planted here and there, waiting to spring into action should the need arise.

One cannot accuse him of not learning the lessons of his own experience as a disgruntled loser, and from former president Milton Obote's mistakes. Perhaps the most decisive mistake was for Obote to relax and not prepare the security forces for possible trouble when he was accused of stealing an election.

Meanwhile, even among some ordinary Ugandans, the controversies the polls have generated have gone beyond mere verbal argument. Kampala and the larger rural towns may have been spared, but parts of the countryside exploded into violence as losers of elections at parliamentary and local government level protested the results and their supporters decided they would not sit back and accept defeat. The brawls have left thousands nursing physical wounds, others dead.

This is in keeping with the way many ordinary Ugandans, never having received civic education of any sort, conceive of political competition: It is all about winning.

Some 30 years ago, as we celebrated the rise to power of a group of politicians much younger and more radical than those we had hitherto been used to, and as the new rulers promised something new and fresh, no one could have predicted the current state of affairs. We expected political sanity and maturity.

Recently I was mulling over all this when I chanced upon a media report in which an opposition politician was talking about members of the ruling party. He was emphatic about his dislike for them, saying that he believes they are all the same and equally responsible for, or supportive of, everything he feels is wrong with their party and what it has done to the country.

He then defended his view that musicians who entertained crowds at President Museveni's campaign rallies should be boycotted. His reason was that Ugandans, including the unemployed and those with limited access or none to social services, should identify with "those who feel their pain," not those who are responsible for it.

Heavy stuff, I thought. And then my mind turned to examining the merits of his assertions. Fortunately, I had spent some time talking to members and supporters of the ruling party, in their different guises. Among the things I would not say about them is that they think or say the same things about their party or even its leadership.

If other Ugandans want change, so do some of them. If other Ugandans feel the NRM and its leadership could have done better on a range of issues, some who identify with the party share that view.

My interactions have stretched to members of opposition parties whose main preoccupation is how to remove Museveni and his party from power. Here, too, one finds a diversity of opinions about why they have failed to do so all these years, and how they and their party leaders are partly to blame for this failure.

The details are too many to go into here, but clearly, even as they stand on opposite sides of the political fence and glower at each other, on several issues they agree more than they disagree. If they appreciated this enough, they would seek to talk to each other more, perhaps even work together, and spare themselves unnecessary hatred.

And really anyone who knows about unemployment and lack of access to social services and the pain they cause and does not seek to exploit them for political purposes, would know that the vast majority of Ugandans regardless of what political party they support, face the same challenges.

Consider the one hospital, Abim Hospital in Karamoja, which caused so much controversy when presidential candidate Kizza Besigye visited it.

Such is the shape it is in that the panicky response of the ruling party and the government came as no surprise, nor the subsequent decision to bar candidates from visiting health facilities.

As if to confirm that such things affect all of us equally regardless of our politics, those who die of preventable diseases because of poor health services include supporters of the ruling party and their relatives. Less fighting and hatred and more collaboration among our leaders and those who seek to replace them will do all of us a lot of good.

Frederick Golooba-Mutebi is a Kampala- and Kigali-based researcher and writer on politics and public affairs. E-mail: fgmutebi@yahoo.com

Opposition or NRM, we go to the same (horrible) hospitals - Comment

http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/OpEd/comment/Opposition-or-NRM--we-go-to-the-same-horrible-hospitals-/-/434750/3115000/-/138pwg9z/-/index.html

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