{UAH} BOBI WINE WILL NEVER EQUAL MUSEVENI, NOT EVEN IN 100 YEARS - ANDREW MWENDA

BOBI WINE WILL NEVER EQUAL MUSEVENI, NOT EVEN IN 100 YEARS - ANDREW MWENDA

Bobi Wine is being presented to us domestically and internationally as the symbol of our struggle for democracy, freedom, liberty and social transformation. Even some of our "intellectuals" are treating him as an alternative to President Yoweri Museveni. This is the pathway to disaster.

I sympathize with Bobi Wine having been brutally tortured by a cruel state security apparatus. However, this cannot blind me to the strategic risk he and his radical extremist supporters pose to the values of liberty and freedom that I treasure. And neither is it lost to me that he lacks even the most rudimentary understanding of our politics and economics.

Bobi Wine's only qualification as an alternative to Museveni is that he is critical of the status quo. Our "intellectuals" don't care what he stands for, the values he represents, the policy alternatives he proposes, the leadership abilities he has demonstrated, the alliances he is cultivating and the organizational ability he has exhibited.

African elite always argue that our continent has been cursed by bad leaders. Yet these same elites exhibit the worst irresponsible behavior when selecting leaders. They embrace demagogues shouting empty slogans against incumbent governments without making any effort to assess the leadership qualities of such characters. When these new leaders come to power and repeat the blunders of their predecessors, the same African elites take to media and elsewhere to complain that the problem is leaders. But these elites are the ones who select wrong people in the first place.

Every government promotes policies that reflect the interest of its social base. So what is Bobi Wine's support base? It is not manufacturers with a vested interest in industrial transformation. Neither is it large scale commercial farmers with the vested interest in the modernization of agriculture. They are not traders who seek policies that promote free trade. Instead they are largely less educated or inexperience and unemployed or underemployed angry youths looking opportunities for salaried employment. At best therefore, a Bobi Wine government can only produce Museveni's patronage politics without the president's finesse.

If Bobi Wine became president, he has to reward his riffraff supporters with jobs. But they lack basic skills or experience for professional jobs. He cannot force the private sector to hire them. Neither can he recruit them into the state's professional jobs. The only place he can hire them is in security services – army, police and intelligence organizations which are always the dumping grounds of the lumpen supporters in poor countries. This brings us to their values, which will be reflected in their work.

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