The devil they know

The paradox of Ugandan politics, as last week's presidential poll demonstrated, lies in the Ugandan electorate's sense of both frustration and complacency, writes Gamal Nkrumah
For Uganda these are the best of times and the worst of times. The Nile Basin country should be rejoicing in the success of a large-turnout (70.3 per cent) election, but matters aren't so simple. Incumbent President Yoweri Museveni was officiating at his victory parade last Thursday in the capital Kampala when two bombs went off. The first explosion rocked Nakivubo Mews close to a busy market in the heart of the city and instantly killed one woman and seriously injured six other innocent bystanders. The second blast blew up a taxi-minibus in Mitala Maria, 100 km southwest of Kampala. A third bomb exploded the following day.
The political mood in Uganda reflects that of Africa as a whole. As elsewhere in the continent, the mood is souring. The calibre of the political elite is becoming more mediocre, people incessantly complain. Sorely missing is a choice between viable political alternatives represented by competent, credible and reinvigorated politicians. Urban Ugandans, in particular, want to see fresh faces in positions of power. In the 12 March elections, the cities voted against Museveni, while the rural backwaters staunchly supported him.
Museveni's National Resistance Movement (NRM) swept to power in 1986 after a protracted armed struggle that ended the hegemony of provincial warlords. Uganda's 10.7 million eligible voters feel increasingly alienated from their leaders and Museveni is seen as arrogant and aloof. On the other hand, a majority prefer the devil they know.
Museveni is accused of betraying the ideals he stood for when he first took office. The Ugandan president considers multiparty politics divisive, sectarian and tribalist, and stifles dissenting voices even within his supposedly all-inclusive NRM. By striving to prevent any rival from emerging from within his own political organisation, Museveni has tenaciously managed to retain uncontested centre stage. Uganda, under the NRM, has an all-inclusive and democratic political system, and is not a one-party state, Museveni insists.
Museveni's ambitions have not been limited to Uganda. In 1998 he ordered Ugandan troops to invade the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in a barely concealed incursion to plunder the diamond-rich and nearly defenceless neighbour.
But in the background, many in the president's own political camp were becoming demoralised. Antagonists soon emerged from within the ranks of his closest associates in the ruling NRM and then the movement's tortuous search to regain legitimacy began in earnest.
In last Monday's presidential poll, Museveni won almost 70 per cent of the valid vote compared to 27.8 per cent for his chief rival Dr Kizza Besigye, Museveni's one-time personal physician and a retired army colonel. The opposition cried foul, claiming that ballot boxes had been stuffed with ballots ticked in Museveni's favour. Voting started before the appointed time and ended before legitimate voters could cast their ballots, the opposition asserts. Besigye claimed that his party's polling agents in Uganda's Western region were arrested and detained for several hours.
"We shall be petitioning the Supreme Court and pressing our grounds, as we presented to the commission, requiring a nullification of this election," Besigye said. Claiming the poll was "grossly fraudulent," he called for fresh elections. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch corroborated opposition claims and accused the Ugandan government of instituting a reign of terror, complete with "arbitrary arrests, attacks and intimidation" of Besigye's supporters. Monitors from Kenya and South Africa agreed. Observers from Libya, Nigeria and Tanzania, on the other hand, said that there was no malpractice.
Earlier this week, the head of Uganda's military intelligence Lt Col Noble Mayombo told reporters in Kampala that Besigye was prevented from boarding a plane headed for South Africa on Saturday for interrogation into the three explosions.
Museveni's critics decried "massive rigging and irregularities" and three senior officials of the Electoral Commission were promptly arrested on charges of corruption. Electoral Commission Chairman Aziz Kasujja, however, pronounced the poll "free and fair." Museveni's Information Minister Basoga Nsadhu concurred and rejected opposition claims of fraud, saying, "The people of Uganda have spoken."
Museveni, seeking a last five-year term after running the country for 15 years, was in no mood to compromise. "We shall rout them. They will not divert our plans," pledged a frenzied Museveni before the polls opened. He is aware that his popularity is eroding, but is unwilling to admit that the opposition has a case. "We have received information that some officials in the Electoral Commission are colluding with some [opposition] elements to mess up our elections," Museveni said of opposition and human rights groups. "They are the same forces determined to disrupt the achievements of the [NRM]," he explained.
The shadow of violence looms large. Museveni, after all, took up arms in 1981 precisely because he believed that the electoral process had been rigged. But today, Besigye aside, the Ugandan opposition forces are in disarray. Other presidential hopefuls were MP Aggrey Awori, businessman Chapaa Karuhanga, lawyer Francis Bwengye and university lecturer Mohamed Kibitige Mayanja. Together they mustered a pitiful 5 per cent of the vote.
These were the second direct presidential elections in Uganda since it gained independence from Britain in 1962. Museveni won a landslide victory in the first voting in 1996. Museveni's main challenger then was Dr Paul Ssemogerere, who stood for a return to multiparty politics. To the opposition's chagrin, a referendum resoundingly rejected Western-style multiparty democracy last year. But the matter has not been laid to rest.
Sensing a chance for change, Besigye finally severed his ties with the NRM in 1999 when he gave a highly publicised, scathing criticism of President Museveni and accused the NRM of being undemocratic and corrupt. A former Museveni comrade-in-arms, Besigye turned into a ferocious corruption watchdog who lashed out at his erstwhile master. To add insult to injury, Besigye wedded a former Museveni paramour, the mercurial Winnie Byanyima, MP representing Mbarara, Museveni's home district. Mbarara, once the hub of the ancient Ankoli Kingdom, is a barometre for the country's general mood and a political powder-keg. The Ankoli people are ethnically divided into the pro-Museveni Bahima, related to Rwanda's Tutsi, and the pro-Besigye Bairu, related to the Hutu -- an ominously familiar conflict scenario in Africa's Great Lakes region.
But Museveni's Uganda is not a typical authoritarian one-party African dictatorship. Over 50 private radio stations are in operation, many of them broadcasting lively and highly critical debates of government policy, cronyism, nepotism and corruption in the run-up to last week's presidential polls. And Uganda's pre-election violence pales into insignificance when compared with countries like Zimbabwe or neighbouring Kenya.
Museveni undoubtedly drew electoral advantage from the remarkable improvements that have taken place in Uganda since he assumed office in 1986. In many ways Uganda is doing well -- at least better than many other African countries. Yet Uganda's political and institutional fabric is in poor condition. With an annual growth of 7 per cent, Uganda's economic prospects look good on paper. But many Ugandans fail to see the tangible results of such growth. Many say they are getting poorer and unhealthier.
Moreover, Ugandans, like other Africans, yearn for a more lively civil society and dream of more checks and balances in government. That much is clear. Still, the grim memories of decades of barbarous dictatorship under Idi Amin and the chaos and factional fighting that ensued after the second coming to power of former President Milton Obote are still fresh in people's minds. Before Museveni, Uganda was ripped apart by a brutal and utterly devastating civil war that claimed millions of lives.
Today, the key to enhanced democratisation of Uganda does not lie with Museveni, but with the West, which keeps the Kampala regime on life support with credit loans and economic aid. For the West, Museveni's most endearing characteristic has been his "commitment to free-market economics, fiscal prudence and repayment of international debts," as Britain's Daily Telegraph conceded. Even so, the paper warned that Museveni had "disappointed his foreign backers." The West has a moral obligation to egg Museveni on to genuine democracy. Anything else would be a betrayal of the people who have gone out on the streets to celebrate his victory, not to mention those killed and injured in last week's blasts.
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