{UAH} That lucky man Besigye! by Joachim Buwembo

Last time President Yoweri Museveni was sworn in five years ago, his main challenger Dr Kizza Besigye was partially blind. He had been sprayed with pepper, as the similarly named local tabloid Red Pepper would put it, Besigye had been sprayed like a cockroach. As Museveni's swearing-in ceremony was being performed on Kololo hill, Besigye was being driven from Entebbe Airport, on his return from Nairobi for emergency treatment. Media attention shifted to the returning retired colonel.

This time, Besigye does not have to endure pepper spray and risk blindness to take the shine off Museveni's big day. His comrades in Museveni's cabinet have done the job for him. The retried colonel who again came second in the five yearly presidential elections like he has always done, can sit back in a rocking chair and savour the gift that his cabinet friends have given him. What are friends for anyway?

Publicity can be quite costly. In any public campaign you launch, the PR budget can be quite high. In a campaign for hearts, it can be as high as 90%. In fact it can even approach 100% because you need to pass the message on or else you may as well give up on the entire venture. Besigye's current campaign is called defiance. And he does not have to spend another shilling on it. Uganda's cabinet has done the job for him.

On Thursday morning, barely a week to Museveni's swearing in, Besigye's bush war comrade, Maj Gen Jim Muhwezi called a press conference to announce the cabinet decisions. The retired general who is minister of information announced that the media is prohibited from covering Besigye's defiance activities, and the penalty for this is revocation of their operating license.

The announcement came days after a ruling by Deputy Chief Justice Stephen Kavuma in the constitutional court prohibiting Besigye's protests. Many in the public had not taken Kavuma's ruling seriously and the Law Society had issued a statement dismissing it. Cabinet was now issuing an executive order not just to the political opposition but to the media as well. The humour or irony was that that the cabinet decision had been taken on World Press Freedom Day or the day after. Minister Jim Muhwezi had in fact presided over the press freedom celebrations.

To understand the generosity of Besigye's cabinet friends, you need to remember that journalists world over react instinctively to the slightest threat to their freedom  and usually dont even take criticism kindly. I had just written a criticism of the Ugandan journalist on this page for their role in abusing press freedom and several gave me my share of angry barbs on social media. So you can imagine what Muhwezi's declaration did. The media went into overdrive to spread the news.

It was not even so much the local reaction. The international media jumped on the story like there had been a coup in Uganda. Big media outlets out there including the BBC had publicised the story by afternoon of the same day. IF the world out there had not known that Uganda's president was going to swear in, now they know, but as the smaller aspect of their story – that all is being done to fight Besigye, the man who claims to have won the election.

Could it be that Besigye's birthday was this week? We need to ask his comrade Jim. For why would they shower him with such a wonderful present? Or is it just for old times' sake?

 Actually Kizza Besigye turned 60 on April 22 and he got thousands of HBD wishes on social media. The cabinet guys seem to be saying that they can give him a weightier gift than fans clicking away on social media…

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Without God, our week would be: Sinday, Mournday, Tearsday,Wasteday, Thirstday, Fightday & Shatterday. Remember seven days without God makes one WEAK!!"And if Allah touches you with harm, none can remove it but He, and if He touches you with good, then He is Able to do all things." (6:17)

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