By Prof. Dani W. Nabudere
Dec 30, 2003
I was frightened by the responses our President gave to Mr Robin White in his interview with him that was broadcast on the BBC on Christmas Day.
Even the fact that White asked the question about the people and Cabinet being frightened of him twice should have alerted the President that a problem existed even amongst his âcolleaguesâ in the Cabinet.
We were recently informed by Mr Eriya Kategaya that the President personally presided over the Cabinet meeting that decided on pushing the issue of the third term as a joint Cabinet decision. This was not denied in his recent reaction to the Kategaya allegation.
It is well known that many members of the Cabinet opposed the third term project. So it is clear that there is some kind of intimidation going on at governmental level to ensure that the third term project succeeds.
We already feel this going on at grassroots level, as witnessed by the recent Parliamentary Advocacy Forum Organisation meeting in Mbale, where we begun to hear the chorus about âArticle Oneâ and âthe peopleâ having âpowerâ perhaps to vote.
This cannot go on without some high level pressures and âfacilitationâ.
What really raises the issue of fear is the determination with which the President is pushing the issue of a âvision.â
He has discovered this to be a good way of changing the goal posts and insisting that âthe people must decideâ the issue of any constitutional change, including the third term project well knowing that the people are quite helpless in this respect.
But even then this is presumptuous because Parliament has not even seen the Ssempebwa Constitutional Review report.
So, how can the President already be insisting that the people must decide the issue when clearly the amendment of Article 105(2) is the mandate of Parliament and Parliament must agree that instead of them doing so, they would prefer the public to do so? This insistence suggests that he is in fact campaigning for this issue
This explains why The Monitor newspaper was stopped from publishing the draft report by the court injunction on the governmentâs insistence, which revealed that the Commission had rejected the third term recommendation.
The insistence that the âpolitical classâ has to discuss with the President his âvisionâ of Uganda following the transition of Singapore and Malaysia is clearly part of the shifting of goal posts.
We all know that the âvisionâ that Museveni, in particular, had on the initiation of the bush war was that Uganda should follow the âmixed economyâ model and build an âindependent, integrated and self-sustaining economyâ.
The strategy was to utilise barter trade to achieve the objective. But this âvisionâ was quickly changed when the National Resistance Movement (NRM) government acquiesced to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
That former âvisionâ was abandoned in favour of the World Bank and IMF âvisionâ of liberalisation, privatisation and deregulation. The talk of the private sector playing a leading role was not the original NRM vision.
This new imposed âvisionâ is part of the foreign policy that relies on US leadership as we have recently witnessed with Uganda voting with the US alone out of the total membership of the African Union, with some four obscure Island ânation-statesâ in support.
Even the USâ most trusted ally, Britain, refused to vote with the US in support of Israel.
What the President calls his âvisionâ is contested by a majority of Ugandans and it is not enough for him to insist that the âpolitical classâ âcrystalliseâ this vision with him, even when this political class is not allowed to organise politically and consult their members on the issue.
It is especially immoral when he says: âI want to resolve the issue of the vision once and for allâ âBut what I am really insisting [on] is the vision because I will not have a situation where in 2040 Uganda is still a backward country.â
Why the heck does the President think that it is only his vision that matters and why should Ugandans be held hostage to it?
What is indeed frightening to us is the fact that the President says that those who say that after 17 years he has achieved all he can do are wrong because what he has done so far is a âfirst phaseâ of âminimum recovery.â
This suggests that he wants a life presidency because he wants to be there when Uganda moves along the road Singapore and Malaysia have followed and retire like President of Malaysia, Mohammed Mahathir, recently did.
But we are not all agreed that we must follow those two models, other models are possible and these can only come out if other visions are allowed to crystallise through a democratic process.
It is clear that the President is no longer confident that Parliament can support his views and that is why he talks all the time about âthe peopleâ deciding.
The President knows that the rural people do not even follow the debates on this issue or their basis. Their poverty will be exploited by offers of Shs 200 salt sachets so that they vote for issues they do not understand as happened in the past elections.
Mr President, let the people of Uganda be free to elect their leaders according to a democratic process under a pluralist system. Please stick to the timetable otherwise you will throw this country into turmoil from which we may never recover.
Stop frightening us with your tough militaristic talk and manipulations.
In your response to Kategaya you told us that you have never feared to confront issues publicly and yet in the same response you told us that you had âguidedâ Vice President Bukenya in âa confidential letterâ about your âpersonal views on constitutional reformâ so that he could âguide our supportersâ on the issue.
Who are âour supportersâ and why should you âguideâ Prof. Bukenya on your own âpersonal viewsâ without yourself coming out openly to state them?
Why did you use Prof. Bukenya? Why did you not openly yourself tell all Ugandans and not only your âsupportersâ that you wanted a life presidency in order to complete the remaining âphasesâ of your vision project?
This is why we are worried, in fact, frightened that you will stop at nothing until you win your life presidency project. This has serious security consequences for our country and we ask you to stop it and leave the stage for other political players.
Prof. Nabudere is affiliated to the Afrika Study Centre in Mbale. [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 2003 The Monitor Publications
