You have no idea
Em
Toronto
The Mulindwas Communication Group
"With Yoweri Museveni, Uganda is in anarchy"
Groupe de communication Mulindwas
"avec Yoweri Museveni, l'Ouganda est dans l'anarchie"
----- Original Message -----
From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <ugandanet@kym.net>
Sent: Friday, August 26, 2005 9:23 PM
Subject: RE: [Ugnet] Re: [Ugandacom] President Museveni's time is nigh
Mulindwa,
What do I have to do with this?
vukoni
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [Ugnet] Re: [Ugandacom] President Museveni's time is nigh
From: "Edward Mulindwa" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Sat, August 20, 2005 8:01 pm
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Cc: ugandanet@kym.net
Andrew Mwenda
Yea and we need you as a journalist after Museveni, so forget the
Vukoni's who are using your case for cheap shots at the movement clean up
or you are not a journalist.
Em
Toronto
The Mulindwas Communication Group
"With Yoweri Museveni, Uganda is in anarchy"
Groupe de communication Mulindwas
"avec Yoweri Museveni, l'Ouganda est dans l'anarchie"
----- Original Message -----
From: gook makanga
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Saturday, August 20, 2005 8:44 PM
Subject: [Ugandacom] President Museveni's time is nigh
August 21 - 27, 2005
Every now and then a time of reckoning comes, and President
Museveni's is nigh
ANDREW M. MWENDA
President Museveni's decision to close KFM radio station on August 11
because of my radio show of the previous day and throw me in jail came
exactly as expected.
Strategically, this is a sign of political weakness not strength. This
strategy is not new. After the 2001 presidential elections, Mr Museveni
meted out unmitigated harassment against his opponent Kizza Besigye and
wife Winnie Byanyima leading to their escape from the country. I wrote a
three-part article in Sunday Monitor in October 2001 arguing that this
harassment was not aimed at Dr Besigye and Ms Byanyima although they were
the victims of it. Rather Museveni was using it to demonstrate to other
historical pillars of the NRM the costs of taking Besigye's path. In
colonial parlance, this was called "gunboat diplomacy". TACTICAL
MANOEUVRES: Gen. Museveni. File photo
As with Besigye and Byanyima, the President did not aim at KFM or Monitor
Publications Limited. His target goes beyond the media and independent
private enterprises to threaten freedom of expression generally. Much
more broadly, the target of Museveni in this action is the wider Ugandan
society, which he wants to subdue on his path to consolidate a one-man
totalitarian regime. Over the last 20 years, Museveni has sustained his
strategy of neutralising and destroying every organisation or institution
that stands independent of him.
Background
In 1986 when he was politically weak, he consolidated his position
through an inclusive strategy that brought other political parties,
especially the Uganda Peoples Congress (UPC) and the Democratic Party
(DP) into a broad-based government. But this was only a tactical
manoeuvre to win a strategic objective - consolidating his power.
Museveni then used the "gentleman's agreement" with these parties to keep
them in a cooler while using resistance councils to consolidate the NRM
at the grassroots.
By 1994, the parties had been weakened by co-optation, legal restrictions
and eight years of hate propaganda to suffer a resounding defeat in the
Constituent Assembly elections, a defeat that was consolidated by the
1996 presidential and parliamentary elections.
However, Museveni's strategy of political consolidation was heavily
reliant on financial aid from international creditors. This made it
difficult for him to consolidate one party rule in the post-Cold War
world unless he demonstrated some commitment to democratic values, hence
press freedom, some judicial independence and other democratic safeguards
under the 1995 Constitution.
Museveni also exploited donor-sponsored economic reforms to destroy other
forms of civic organisation independent of him such as trade unions and
co-operatives. In their wake, what emerged was a "civil society"
dominated by foreign aid-funded local and international NGOs who - except
for a few - are merely vehicles of income for their employees than
representatives of a vibrant civic life.
Although the Sixth Parliament was actually a one-party Parliament
dominated by NRM members, it sought to impose checks on how Museveni
managed (or should we say mismanaged) state affairs.
By weakening external opposition to him in form of DP and UPC, Museveni
had inadvertently allowed submerged tensions within NRM to take centre
stage. As a result, a new opposition now formed around the moderate and
progressive wing within the NRM itself against its more extremist and
anti-democratic elements. The progressives inside the NRM united with the
opposition in the old political parties around the Young Parliamentarians
Association and formed a vibrant political force.
The new opposition
As battles raged between the two sides, Museveni sought to remove this
alternative platform taking shape inside the NRM but more reflected in
the institution of Parliament. Between 1998 and 2003, he progressively
weakened the moderate, enlightened and pro-democratic faction of the NRM,
while at the same time neutralising Parliament as an institution.
The period 2003-2005 has been instructive as Museveni was able to realise
this vision. Mr Eriya Kategaya, his childhood friend and deputy prime
minister, and other former Cabinet ministers such as Mr Mathew Rukikaire,
from whose house the "revolution" was launched, Mr Bidandi Ssali, Ms
Miria Matembe, Mr Amanya Mushega, Mr Richard Kaijuka, and former army
commander Mugisha Muntu were chased out of the NRM.
Having crippled the old parties and out-foxed internal opposition within
the NRM, Museveni soon found yet another centre of independent thinking -
the judiciary. The old and new opposition sought to use the democratic
safeguards of the 1995 Constitution to challenge Museveni's increasingly
autocratic rule using the courts.
Between 1999 and 2004, the opposition won a series of victories in the
courts of law. When Museveni woke up to this trend, he took his stand: he
went on television and threatened judges, and the next day his handlers
organised thugs who demonstrated "against the rule of law" and chased
judges out of their chambers. After this experience, we wait to see
whether the courts will hold strong.
With all these state and civic centres of opposition within Uganda
crippled, Museveni now stands at the pinnacle of his political power.
Across the political terrain, there is no organised body to challenge his
increasingly autocratic rule.
I have argued before that the only remaining challenge to his authority
i.e. "the" opposition is the donors (because of their financial muscle),
Rwanda (because of its military capacity) and the media, especially
Monitor (because it offers a platform to those with an alternative view).
I often joke with friends that Monitor is not an opposition newspaper but
"the" opposition.
Museveni is smart. He clearly understands that Monitor's capacity to play
this role is as much based on ideology as it is on sound business and
commercial considerations. In a country with a one-man-knows-it-all
President, and where every institution - state or civic - has been
crippled, to position oneself as independent has a very high risk, but
equally a critical market advantage. Media thrive in a democratic
environment, and therefore Monitor has to support a democratic
dispensation.
An independent stance brings audience and advertisers, thus enhancing the
company's financial independence. Financial independence insulates
Monitor as a business from state control and direction.
The new strategy
The closure of KFM is only the beginning of a new strategy in Museveni's
long march to absolute power. In spite of liberalisation and
privatisation, the state in Uganda has remained the largest consumer and
formal sector employer. Private sector companies that want to thrive need
business from the state in form of tenders, contracts, etc. Only those
who support the President may now find it possible to reap such benefits.
Already, collapsing private companies are subsidised by the President at
state expense in order to win over their owners. Museveni understands
that financial independence also means political independence, and in the
new phase that is one area he is going to attack.
At Kololo on Wednesday, August 10, Museveni attacked all independent
media and threatened to close them down. Private FM stations, with all
their weaknesses, have for over a decade now provided a forum for lively
debate on national issues in a country without organised opposition.
The closure of KFM is not aimed at its parent company - Monitor
Publications Limited - per se (that is only a sub-plot). Museveni is
using KFM to warn all other private FM stations on how to behave in the
next election campaigns.
The new strategy does not aim at journalists as professionals but seeks
to attack media organisations as businesses i.e. to cripple their
financial independence. It was not by mistake that Museveni did not
threaten action on "practicing journalism" but "doing business" while
speaking at Kololo. But it would be naïve to think this attack would be
restricted to media organisations. Businesses independent of state
patronage are going to come under increasing strain too.
I have already argued that Museveni tolerated press freedom not because
he believed in it, but rather as an alibi to justify the consolidation of
one-party rule in the context of his dependence on international
creditors in the aftermath of the Cold War. Now that his relationship
with international donors is coming under increasing strain because of
his overt desire to become a President-for-life, Museveni no longer needs
any democratic pretences. As his regime becomes more autocratic, his
international creditors will become shy and begin a phased withdraw.
Without international resources to pay for this vast patronage, Museveni
will seek to predate on the private sector.
What the future holds
It has all happened in Africa before. To survive politically, Museveni
has to depend on others to produce economically. Over the years he
depended on international donors. If the donors withdraw, it is unlikely
that Museveni will seek to create wealth, which he can tax to pay for his
patronage.
Given his current autocratic style, Museveni will most likely seek to
capture wealth from those who possess it. This is because creating wealth
requires negotiating with those who own assets. Such negotiation would
require that Museveni listens to asset holders on what public policies
and political institutions are necessary for rapid business growth. This
would mean delegating decision-making power i.e. conceding political
liberty to those whose wealth he desires.
Secondly, the foundation for wealth creation is actually political
restraint. Those who possess capital need guarantee that when they invest
it, their rights to property will be respected. His Highness the Aga Khan
who owns Monitor has other investments in Uganda as well - in the
pharmaceutical industry, a dam in Jinja, real estate, hotels, schools. If
the government of Uganda can close one of the lines of his business
because a journalist said something the President did not want to hear,
it follows that all his other businesses are at risk.
But it is not the Aga Khan alone: other owners of capital who have
invested or want to invest in Uganda get frightened because the lack of
political restraint places their investments at risk.
The closure of KFM demonstrates not only the political irrationality of
this regime, but also how political irrationality is self-destructive.
The political basis of Museveni's government has two levels. The first is
political patronage to buy off the elite class in Uganda using state
jobs - 78 presidential advisors, more than 100 special assistants to the
President, 68 Cabinet ministers, a stadium-size Parliament, more than 80
commissions and semi-autonomous government agencies, the creation of 47
new districts which provide innumerable jobs and contracts to local
elites because 40 percent of the national budget is spent at the district
level.
The second basis is popular grassroots benefits such as universal primary
education and basic healthcare. To sustain this vast patronage system and
grassroots programmes requires resources. Over the years, international
creditors have provided the money (called foreign aid) to support the
system.
The President's options
If President Museveni is to walk away from international creditors, he
must find a new source of revenue. Only three avenues are available. He
can find a hole in the earth full of a rich mineral - diamonds, gold or
oil. The state would not need to democratise since it can exploit this
rich mineral to raise revenue to pay for its political survival. This
explains why, in spite of their wealth, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia are
dictatorships. I do not see any such mineral yet.
The second, the state can ensure rapid business growth and collect more
tax revenue to compensate for donor withdraw. This would call on the
state to listen more to those who own capital, and put in place
guarantees that their investments are safe from arbitrary rule - all of
which means the state must concede political liberty.
Because Museveni is not in the mood to concede liberty and exercise
political restraint, there is the third option which African dictators
mastered in the 1960s and 1970s - expropriation. Here the state may
decide to grab wealth from those who own it - the private sector -
through nationalisation as is happening in Zimbabwe today.
If Museveni chooses this path, the first victims of expropriation will be
western companies (whose mother countries will have withdrawn aid) and
then South African and Asian businesses and finally those among the
indigenous Ugandan private sector who do not support the regime or depend
on it for patronage.
If today a government can close a business in disregard to the law under
the flimsy excuse that an employee "insulted" the President, then
tomorrow another business will be closed because its employees did not
vote for the President, or that it did not contribute campaign finance to
the ruling party.
Secondly, when a government uses its power to seize resources from those
outside its core political constituency, it may make it costly for any
one group to withhold its political support. When private businesses
perceived as "unfriendly" face such political predation, they can begin
to compete among themselves to back the government in power. Again the
political history of Africa through the 1960s and 70s is replete with
this political pathology.
Nonetheless, whatever path he chooses the conclusion for Museveni and his
die-hard supporters in inevitable - political restraint matters. Leaders
always face a choice on whether to be ruled by their egos - and thus run
down the economic foundation of their political survival - or to exercise
political restraint by allowing the growth of institutions that develop
perspectives independent of a leader's personal exercise of power.
President Museveni faces this choice starkly now than ever before.
Gook
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