{UAH} My Take on Besigye's People gov't Vs DP block Alliance!

Friends,

Just because the DP block-including Bobi Wine, regard Besigye's grand strategy of 'removing Museveni before 2021'  with cynicism, however, does not license them to write him out in the general scheme of things. Doing so only impoverishes them. Personally, i think there is considerable intellectual laziness in the idea that the past(past leaders, past presidential candidates, e.t.c) must be problematized and that older people must be `rescued' from their ideological presuppositions. When I speak like this, some people assume that i'm probably in the same age bracket as Besigye, but iam in the same with Bobi's.I haven't yet moved in the pension bracket.

Looking at the extraordinary mess the Uganda opposition is in, you might suppose that it's their ideological presuppositions that are inherently flawed, and that they can actually draw useful moral lessons from the past. Among the lessons they can draw is that Besigye has been standing against Museveni since 2001,and then realised that elections couldn't remove him from power despite overwhelming evidence that he(Besigye) has been winning them. So, if he comes out and tells someone who has never stood for presidential elections that there's a 'snake' that could bite you during the campaigns, and stops you from winning, why would anybody argue against that?

The ideal solution would be to work with the most popular person who has been in the terrain to kill the 'snake' before anything else is done. It seems to me Besigye's arguments can and should be addressed on their own merit or lack thereof. People, like Abed Bwanika,if he's genuine, should be supporting Besigye's strategy, because he(Bwanika) has been standing as a presidential candidate since 2006, if i recall. The idea of changing faces didn't pay off in 2001 when Besigye came in as the main challenger to Museveni, instead of Dr.Paul Ssemogerere, so what makes someone think that it will work in 2021, or in future, against the same opponent,same system, and same Electoral Commission? Not even the much craved Electoral reforms(ER) have been executed anywhere---In fact Gen.Otafiire is now on record saying that he needs shs.13b to implement ERs, but the money isn't available.

Besigye's idea of a People Government isn't different from probably Museveni's idea of a broad-based government after NRM millitary victory in 1986. Museveni needed a political base, and he could only build that through a transition govt, hence, he reached out to DP's Paul Ssemogerere. The day they took power, he met Ssemogerere at Trinity College Nabbingo--Winnie Byanyima,27 years old then, guided the then DP leader to the meeting. The only difference here is that Museveni already had instruments of power, and he was reaching out to the person who had reportedly won the 1980 elections that Obote reportedly rigged.Besigye, on the otherhand, is prematurely forming a govt because he allegedly has evidence that he won the 2016 elections,and he sees no reason why he couldn't form a People govt, instead of waiting for Museveni to keep controlling the electoral process.

Basically, Besigye's govt can serve so many purposes: 1-it act as a negotiationa tool with Museveni at some point; 2-it could potentially fill in the void in case Museveni's govt falls now;3- and it could also act as Besigye's additional network or mobilising tool in case of a future election.  Actually, if Bobi Wine and others had supported him on this, I believe that Museveni would have been forced into some kind of a transition govt before the next elections, due to the pressure. But as things stand now, the opposition is in a limbo!

Bobi had started well-kind of unstopable train, but now he is bogged own into an alliance of losers. And for me, intelligence is an extremely valuable commodity, and its the reason why I always sympathise with Besigye.The ancient wisdom suggesting we ignore most of what we hear applies to opposition politics as well, probably in spades.There's loads of propaganda against Besigye at the moment. The selection of what's useful for you, as a leader, is a matter of choice, and some folks choose badly, but you can't really blame the person who offered what turned out to be bad advice because that same advice may have been beneficial to someone else.

Abbey Kibirige Semuwemba

UNITED KINGDOM 

"In tribute to the United Kingdom and the Republic of Uganda, two bastions of strength in a world filled with strife, discrimination and terrorism."

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