Chicago Tribune (IL)
December 14, 2004
December 14, 2004
Uganda's bright star dims
Critics say president corrupted by 18 years in power
Critics say president corrupted by 18 years in power
Author: Laurie Goering, Tribune foreign correspondent. Edition: Chicago Final
Section: News Page: 1
Dateline: KAMPALA, Uganda
Section: News Page: 1
Dateline: KAMPALA, Uganda
Article Text:
Eighteen years ago, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni seized this nation devastated by endless war and set about transforming it into an African success story.
He privatized failing state industries and brought runaway inflation under control. He spurred Uganda's economic growth rate to a sustained 6 percent to 7 percent a year, a level considered key to making strides against poverty. Since 1992, the number of Ugandans living below the poverty line has fallen more than 10 percent.
Just as important, Museveni soothed festering ethnic divides that once tore apart the country, stemmed a threatened AIDS epidemic, doubled the number of children in primary school and gave women a guaranteed share of political seats.
Then-U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright called him a "beacon of hope" for Africa, part of a new generation of leaders committed to solving the continent's problems. President Bill Clinton paid him a visit. Western aid donors, eager to support an African success story, poured money into Uganda.
Lately, however, nearly everyone has begun to wonder whether Museveni is really a revolutionary democrat or just another African Big Man.
Though he once promised to serve no more than one term in office, Museveni's allies are pushing to change Uganda's Constitution to allow the president a fifth term, along with controversial powers to dissolve parliament.
Allegations of corruption in the administration--including vote-buying in parliament--are growing. Half the university graduates cannot find jobs. Economic growth is slowing. This year, donor nations and international lending agencies that provide 52 percent of Uganda's budget rejected Museveni's plans to increase defense spending at the cost of poverty-eradication programs.
"Uganda is a good study of a democratic process that has come to a halt and is being pushed backward," said Augustine Ruzindana, a member of parliament and former ally of the president.
"Museveni used to be very idealistic and had the public interest at heart," he said. But now "it's becoming evident he is not strong enough to resist the temptations of power."
Redefining Africa
Africa, at the start of a new century, is struggling to remake itself. Its leaders, trying to ease the continent's persistent poverty and other glaring problems, are sorting through deeply rooted cultural traditions, colonial-era legacies and the new demands of a globalized world, searching for African answers to Africa's problems. In the process, they are redefining what it means to be an African success.
Part of that involves resolving the conflict between African tradition, which often allows popular leaders to rule for life, and the continent's widespread desire for Western-style democracy, with presidential term limits, regular changes of leadership and checks and balances on the power of the top executive.
In parts of Africa, democracy is gradually getting the upper hand. Sam Nujoma, the longtime president of Namibia, and Mozambique's multiterm president, Joachim Chissano, both are stepping down after elections in November and December. South Africa's Nelson Mandela showed the most restraint of all, leaving office in 1999 after only one term despite his overwhelming popularity.
But across much of the rest of the continent, leaders have been notoriously reluctant to leave office. Togo and Gabon have had the same presidents since 1967. Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe remains in office after 17 years because of vote-rigging and intimidation of the opposition in the most recent presidential elections. Kenya's Daniel arap Moi stepped down in 2002 after 24 years in office, but only under heavy international pressure.
In Uganda, Museveni, 63, faces a decision that may determine his legacy. Whether he runs for re-election in 2006 is likely to determine whether he goes down in history as a democratic visionary in East Africa or, as his top adviser puts it, "just another African leader who wanted to go on and on."
"If he were to stand, he would jeopardize his chances of stepping into Mandela's shoes," said John Nagenda, Museveni's senior adviser, who has urged him not to run again.
Still, "every country has the right to change its constitution if it wants to," he noted. "Whether it's a good idea, that's debatable."
In rural areas, where 85 percent of Uganda's 26 million people live, Museveni is still a popular hero, credited with rescuing the devastated country from the dark days of dictators Idi Amin and Milton Obote.
A charming man with a populist knack--Museveni has been known to ride one of Uganda's ubiquitous small motorbikes to campaign rallies while opponents arrive in limousines--he took 70 percent of the vote in the last presidential election in 2001, though Amnesty International and a handful of observer countries, including Kenya and South Africa, criticized the government for intimidating opposition voters.
In much of Uganda, "people think there's nobody out there who could do a better job than him," said Onapito Ekomoloit, Museveni's press secretary. "There has been no figure who in any way compares with the president."
Yet after Museveni's many years in office, enthusiasm for him is beginning to flag. In a poll published in August by the Monitor, an opposition newspaper, 69 percent of responding Ugandans said they prefer to keep the nation's constitutional term limits in place, which would prevent Museveni from running--and, everyone agrees, winning--in 2006.
Thwarting rivals
The problem is finding someone to replace a president who has determinedly thwarted the emergence of rivals. As part of his effort to heal Uganda's ethnic rifts, Museveni banned political parties, which he believed split the country on tribal lines, and called on opponents to join his National Resistance Movement. The result, nearly 20 years later, is that Museveni has no real political opposition.
The handful of old parties that remain despite the ban on their activities are widely discredited, and the government has so far failed to follow through on promises to register new parties, including splinter groups from The Movement, as Museveni's organization is known. The president also has not groomed a successor, a clear sign, critics say, that he has no intention of stepping down.
"That Museveni wants to run indefinitely is a foregone conclusion. He sees himself as the only man with a vision," said James Rwanyarare, a spokesman for the Uganda People's Congress, an opposition party that nonetheless sports a life-sized painting of Obote in its Kampala offices. "But the only way for government to work is through institutions, not just an individual. The answer for Uganda is to have politically viable institutions."
An increasing number of Ugandans believe that Museveni, with his conviction that only he can solve Uganda's lingering problems and hold the nation together, is now a threat, rather than an asset, to Uganda's democratic institutions and its long-term democratic prospects.
Uganda's media are among the continent's most vibrant, quick to criticize the president for his failings. Its judicial system has made key decisions against the president's interests, and its parliament often engages in spirited debate. But proposed constitutional changes--including the lifting of term limits and new powers for the president to dissolve parliament if it disagrees with him--threaten those institutions, critics say. Uganda's headlines are full of allegations that the president's allies are buying votes in support of the changes.
"Indications are the constitution will be amended, whether we like it or not," said Sheila Kawamara, a Ugandan member of the East African Legislative Assembly--a multicountry parliament with largely advisory powers--and a women's rights activist. "With all due respect, it's a strike against democracy."
Critics say the central problem is that Museveni, after many years in office and many accolades, has come to believe only he knows what is best for the country. Even Nagenda, the president's adviser, notes on his Web site that Museveni's strength of conviction "has led him to find it increasingly hard to brook opposition" in recent years and that he has become "increasingly hard-line, personalizing the issues of [opponents] and refusing to recognize that they reflect genuine grievances."
"He's so convinced he's made good decisions [that] he's confused the state's interest with his interest," added one diplomat in Kampala.
Part of the difficulty in persuading Museveni to accept change is that aid donors and other international backers, who embraced the president as an African star in the 1990s and who still provide much of Uganda's funding, now find it somewhat embarrassing to suggest he is less than a democratic hero.
`African success story'
"They were looking for the great African success story, and this was it," said Charles Onyango-Obbo, a Ugandan opposition journalist repeatedly arrested and charged with bringing the president's name into disrepute. Now "it has become very hard for them to say he was wrong without putting their own credibility on the line."
Donors eventually cut off aid to the corrupt government of President Moi in neighboring Kenya, accelerating his decision to step down. But in Uganda "it's hard in the position we are in now to go back to the Kenya model," said one diplomat from a donor nation. "This is not a failed state. This is not a dictatorship."
Critics say that if Museveni stays in power another term, he could well drive his frustrated opponents toward Uganda's traditional method for removing presidents--the military coup. Since Uganda became independent in 1963, every one of its presidents has left at gunpoint.
"If he succeeds in manipulating the constitution and breaking down the separation of powers, a lot of people will say the only way to change now is through violence," said Aggrey Awori, a parliamentarian who faced Museveni for the presidency in 2001 and plans to run in 2006.
Other critics see a more benign scenario. Even if Museveni wins in 2006, they say, young voters--a growing proportion of the electorate--will eventually stop him from becoming president for life, as long as elections are free and fair.
A growing proportion of young voters, thanks to the president, are educated, and "if you can read and write, you can reason," Kawamara said.
They also grew up in good times, and the president's stories of the bad old days, before he saved Uganda, no longer resonate, she said.
She, like a growing number of Ugandans, thinks it's time for the country's old hero to go.
"He loves his country and has a vision and has brought it far," she said. "But there are many people out there who have the same ability. When you stay too long, you burn out. It's just human."
- - -
- Area: 93,070 square miles; about the size of Oregon
- Population: 26.4 million
- Government type: Republic, with a constitution and limited operation of political parties
- Independence: 1962, from Britain
- Religions: Roman Catholic, 33%; Protestant, 33%; Muslim, 16%; indigenous beliefs, 18%
- Literacy rate: 70%
- Poverty rate (2001): 35%
- Agriculture: Coffee, tea, cotton, tobacco, beef, goat meat, milk
- Industries: Sugar, brewing, textiles
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