{UAH} Is it the end of Besigye’s revolution?
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Police use a water cannon to force Dr Besigye out of his vehicle in Kampala last year.
According to journalist Daniel Kalinaki's book Kizza Besigye and Uganda's Unfinished Revolution, about six months before the 2001 general election, Col Dr Kizza Besigye asked his wife Winnie Byanyima whether she would accept to be a presidential candidate representing those in the NRM who felt let down by President Museveni.
Ms Byanyima declined. Among her many considerations was the aspect of time.
"I guess they (people) are (fed up with him), but it takes time to turn discontent into votes," she said.
In July 2018, The Nation, a United States-based electronic publication, published an article, 'The US turns a blind eye to Uganda's assault on democracy' in which it attempted to paint a picture of the kind of resources against which the Opposition has to work.
"Museveni's political machine runs on a war chest of hundreds of millions of dollars, much of it stolen from the Treasury and foreign-aid programmes. This ensures his party has a comfortable parliamentary majority…" the article reads in parts.
The article also points to the ruling National Resistance Movement's (NRM) use of State machinery and other resources to its advantage.
Despite working from a very disadvantaged position, Dr Besigye, who was days after the couple's conversation which we referred to earlier, to declared his own candidature , has over the last 20 years seen his support, at least going by the numbers of those who have been voting for him, rise from two million votes in March 2001 to the 3.5 million votes in 2016.
This build up has been, in part, due to the fact that he seemed to read and understand Mr Museveni much better than some of the people who had known and worked for the President much earlier and longer than himself.For example, when members of the Ankole Parliamentary Group (APG) sought to dissuade him from contesting against Mr Museveni in 2001 on grounds that Mr Museveni would be contesting his last term under the Constitution, it was Dr Besigye who pointed out to the group that Mr Museveni would have the Constitution amended to remove term limits.
"If Museveni does not change the Constitution so that he runs again then Kifefe is not my father," he told them before assuring them that Mr Museveni was sure to be a candidate in the 2006 elections.
The journey begins
But it has not been an easy walk. On October 28, 2000, when he declared that he would challenge Museveni, it was because a plan to arrest him had leaked. It would damage Mr Museveni to arrest a person who had just declared his intention to contest against him, but Mr Museveni still lashed out at him for unilaterally declaring himself a candidate.
"Besigye has gone about his intentions in an indisciplined and disruptive way. He has, without consulting any organ of the Movement, launched himself as a Movement candidate although it is well-known that he is in close collaboration with multipartyists. Let us, however, assume that Col Besigye is not in cahoots with multipartyists," Mr Museveni wrote on November 1, 2000.
Mr Museveni, who also accused Dr Besigye of having had a hand in the purchase of junk helicopters from Belarus, promised to pen biweekly missives to "de-toxicate the toxins being administered" by people like Dr Besigye.
Dr Besigye's rebuttal was quick. He invited the President to challenge him on, among other things, the existence of a military tender board and whether he often did not misdirect himself into thinking that he was the tender board. Mr Museveni did not respond. He also never penned the promised bi-weekly missives.
Dr David Babi Kamusaala, the former Jinja Municipality East MP, who was one of the first MPs to support the Reform Agenda, reflects on what it was that made him back Dr Besigye at a time when public support for the NRM was on a high.
"First of all, through the little exchange seen in the media, I realised that we now had someone who could match, or even eclipse Mr Museveni, for coherence. Besides, he was from within the NRM and he was addressing issues such as nepotism, corruption and abuse of power that had started rearing their ugly heads," Dr Kamusaala says.
Factors in strong showing
Opportunity, as they say, strikes with those ready on the dance floor. Dr Besigye took advantage of the situation to build his own brand. Factors such as his military credentials, especially in light of the fact that many Ugandans still believe that Uganda can only be presided over by someone with a military background, and contradictions and weaknesses within the old political parties – Democratic Party (DP) and the Uganda Peoples Congress (UPC) – contributed to his emergence as a strong candidate.
A disagreement between former president Milton Obote and Ms Cecilia Ogwal over the latter's decision to defy a directive by the former not to participate in elections organised by the NRM had caused a rift that left the party split and much weaker.
In DP, Anthony Ssekweyama, who had been tipped to take charge, died in an accident on October 1, 2000. Dr Paul Ssemogerere, who was not keen on contesting again, chose to support Dr Besigye instead of endorsing Mr Francis Bwengye or Mr Nasser Ntege Sebaggala, who had earlier lost the Kampala mayoral job following his conviction for fraud in the United States. The two were fighting to take over the leadership of DP.
The NRM leadership had since January 1986, when it shot its way to power, made it a point to confine parties to their headquarters and blame Uganda's past problems on them. Parties had been cast in so bad a light that being labelled a "multipartyist" meant certain political death.
In Dr Besigye was a candidate who disgruntled NRM cadres and proponents of pluralism could trust.
The campaign
Dr Besigye hit the ground running. He combined policy issues with sloganeering. Top on his agenda were issues such as the scrapping of graduated tax and resurrecting cooperatives. The NRM government was to later implement his promise to scrap graduated tax.
After Mr Museveni equated him to the cotter pin of a bicycle which can only be ejected with the aid of a hammer, some of Dr Besigye's fans in Lukaya handed him a hammer and asked him to use it to eject the cotter pin. He was subsequently named 'Ssenyondo' (master hammer).
At some point, Hajj Sebaggala joined Dr Besigye as a chief campaigner which resulted in chants of "Hajj has ordered that we the uneducated give our votes to Besigye".
Whereas Dr Ssemogerere's challenge had given Ugandans a glimpse into what the NRM could do to retain power, Dr Besigye's candidate brought out the worst in it.
Human Rights Watch in a report titled, 'Not a level playing field,' which was published in February 2001, pointed out that "cases of violence and arbitrary arrests implicate army soldiers, military intelligence officers, the police, and the Presidential Protection Unit (PPU)," had been reported, but not investigated.
Flight into exile
In March 2001, Dr Besigye petitioned the Supreme Court to annul results of the elections on grounds of fraud. Though the court agreed that there had been irregularities, three out of the five judges ruled that they had not been significantly impacted the outcome.
Dr Besigye's movements were soon curtailed. On March 17, 2001, he was forced off a South African Airways flight. On May 25, 2001, Kenya Airways crew were told that their flight would not be cleared for take-off if he was one of the passengers.
On June 30, 2001, Dr Besigye was barred from making his way to Mbarara when he had been scheduled to attend his wife's victory party. The same day Mr Museveni, who was speaking at a press conference in Kisozi, linked Dr Besigye to terrorism and challenged him to denounce colonels Samson Manade and Anthony Kyakabale who had earlier declared war on Museveni.
On August 17, 2001, Dr Besigye fled into exile.
Return from exile
In what was seen as a desperate attempt to keep him off the ballot paper, Dr Besigye, who returned to Uganda in October 2005, was arrested on November 14, 2005, and charged with rape and treason. It was from Luzira prison that he was nominated as the FDC presidential flag bearer.
He was granted bail on November 25, 2005, but he was rearrested and sent back to jail on charges of terrorism and illegal possession of weapons.
He was freed on bail on January 6, 2006, to resume campaigning, but was once again declared runner up in the elections. He challenged the outcome in court, but once again lost.
2011 campaign
In the 2011 campaign, Dr Besigye rebranded. The tough Besigye was replaced with the dancing and smiling Besigye who talked up policy issues, including paying teachers a minimum salary of Shs1 million, establishing a university students' loan scheme and providing students with computers.
Mr Museveni was declared winner, but this time round Dr Besigye did not go to court to contest the outcome. He instead latched on the rise in inflation from four per cent in 2010 to 16.2 per cent in 2011 to launch the "walk-to-work" protests during which he was brutally arrested by ASP Gilbert Arinaitwe, who doused his eyes with pepper spray.
2016 elections
Former prime minister and NRM secretary general Amama Mbabazi, who had once accused Dr Besigye of "jumping the queue", threw his hat in the ring. With the backing of DP, he had been expected to upset Museveni's biggest challenger, but as things turned out Besigye's support base grew even bigger. He bagged 3.5 million, or 35.61 per cent, of the vote while Mr Mbabazi could only manage 136,519, or 1.39 per cent of the vote.
Power centre in his right
Dr Besigye, while recently appearing on NTV's current affairs talk show, 'On the Spot,' declined to say whether he will be a candidate in next year's general election, a position which others like Mr Mwambutsya Ndebesa, a lecturer in history and political science at Makerere University, says is costing FDC heavily.
"Besigye had better come out and say he is a flag bearer or not. I have not heard him say that he is not standing again. He has left FDC in an ambiguous situation. Ambiguity is a problem," Mr Ndebesa says.
However, looked at from another perspective one can argue that the amount of debate that the matter of his candidature has generated serves to reaffirm, as Gen Tumukunde said on March 1, 2018, at the home of Mr Mathew Rukikaire in Rukungiri, that he is "a very powerful man" and a centre of power.
End of revolution?
Dr Besigye has always argued that Uganda is a captured State. Power with all the resources controlled by one per cent of the population, which includes the President and his family, some of his relatives and friends and foreign investors. Power, he says, must shift from the one per cent to the 99 per cent if the country is to work for all.
"The people of Uganda need to get their country into their hands first before they can look for how to run (govern) it. The country Uganda is not in the hands of the people of Uganda," he said while appearing on NTV recently.
In other words, Dr Besigye's revolution can only be said to be complete when power has shifted. Nomination of the FDC presidential candidate is set for Tuesday, but there has so far been no indication that Dr Besigye will be contesting.
Can that shift of power be realised if he is not on that ballot? Or is it simply the end of his revolution?
Prof Sabiiti Makara says it possible for Dr Besigye to work for change through political activism.
"Dr Besigye quit the leadership of FDC in 2012 and went into activism, which has enabled him to continue advancing his views and maintain political support across the country. Even if he does not contest, he can still be a major influencer in matters politics," he says.
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