Why the growing interest in Uganda by Kenyan leaders?

Mr Museveni and Mr Musyoka (left), Mr Odinga and Mr Museveni (right)

Mbale

In the last few weeks, a new development in the politics of the region has emerged where for the first time, high ranking politicians from Kenya have got themselves involved in Uganda presidential election campaigns.

In the month of December last year, Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga flew in and joined President Museveni on his campaign trail in Iganga District where he advised the people of Uganda to elect the right leader for Uganda.

He did not give direct support to Museveni as such, but it is clear that his visit at this sensitive time had to do with some important relationship between the two leaders. There are rumours that his visit had a lot to do with the forthcoming general elections in Kenya where Odinga is expected to stand for the presidency in a new strengthened role in Kenya politics.

But while that visit might be shrouded in some secrecy, that of Vice-President Musyoka this month was explicit in its motives. In his press interview, Musyoka announced that he had come to Uganda as a ‘special envoy’ of President Mwai Kibaki. But he went further to congratulate Museveni for the “job well” and said that this was why he had come “to show solidarity” to him.

Contradictory remarks
These two statements were contradictory. Was Musyoka in Uganda as a ‘special envoy’ of President Kibaki or had he come to congratulate Museveni “on the job well done” in his personal capacity or was it both? If the latter was the case, this would suggest that he had come to Uganda to bring President Kibaki’s greetings and at the same time personally congratulate candidate Museveni on his performance in the campaigns, perhaps in the hope of building some kind of alliance.

If this interpretation of events be correct, then this would confirm the much discussed involvement of the Ugandan President in Kenya elections of 2007-8 in which the Uganda army was alleged to have been sent to Kisumu by President Museveni to give support to candidate Kibaki’s campaign as against Odinga who was also contesting for the presidency of Kenya.

Indeed, a member of the opposition and Member of Parliament representing JEMa in Uganda Parliament, Hussein Kyanjo, argued that Musyoka’s political support “pointed at a possible role of Uganda in the chaos that followed the 2007 Kenyan Presidential Elections of 2007.”

Be that as it may, the recent political support from Kenya by the Kibaki camp reveals a much bigger involvement in the Ugandan campaigns than Uganda’s alleged support for Kibaki last year because Vice-President Musyoka was reported to have addressed three rallies together with President Museveni in Tooro in which Musyoka explicitly advocated support for President Museveni’s campaign.

Museveni did not give that open support to Kibaki or Musyoka. This suggests that a warm cross-border alliance is emerging between the NRM and the Kibaki side of the Kenya coalition government. The question was why?

A simple guess would seem to suggest that what is at work here is the emergence of an advance strategic alliance between the two parties for the forthcoming presidential election in Kenya next year. But as is well known, President Kibaki is expected to retire by the end of this year and will not contest the elections next year.

Therefore, this being the case, it appears that the special message Kibaki sent to Museveni may have aimed at building a political relationship for the party he is going to support for the next presidency in Kenya, for it is clear that he cannot support Odinga’s contest for the presidency given Kenya’s well-known ethnic orientation in both parliamentary and presidential elections.

Such a warm relationship would also be helpful in the forthcoming East African presidential elections in 2013-205 for cross-border alliances would be helpful in one’s political success. President Museveni has on a number of occasions indicated that he wants to be in power in Uganda by 2013 so that he can stand for the East African Presidency.

In that case, it can safely be surmised that President Museveni is trying to develop a political strategic alliance on an East African basis where he can stand as President of East Africa while a Kenyan candidate runs as his running-mate with the support of the to-be retired President Kibaki. But that is neither here nor there, so the question still remains why these cross border visits?

In regard to Odinga, could it be that Odinga sensing that President Museveni was going, through hook or crook, to retain the presidency in Uganda be trying to win over him to his camp in the Kenyan 2012 presidential elections - for it is a well known political dictum that one cannot have permanent friends and enemies.

This has been demonstrated in the Kenyan situation in the ODM-Odinga-Ruto alliance which soon became an enmity and the Ruto-Uhuru political enmity which soon became a political friendship?

Changing politics
Whatever the case, it is clear that the politics in the region are changing and changing fast given the fact that very soon, southern Sudan as well as the Democratic Republic of Congo will be applying to join the East Africa Community, which are likely to create more complications in the region.

We must now take it that the colonial borders between the countries in the region are beginning to break down and this process is likely to become irreversible. But such arrangements that are emerging will still remain elitist manipulations of the political process in the region in which the Old Guard are using public resources to place themselves in advantageous positions ahead of time against the new and younger politicians both in national and in regional politics.

Legitimate process
For a legitimate political process for political unity in the region to take place, the people of East Africa must first be given an opportunity to decide whether they accept this Top-Down fast-tracking of the federation process or reject it. There is beginning to emerge a new tendency towards secessionism and formation of federal autonomies on a much smaller scale than the existing post-colonial states.

This path gives the people in the region another way through which a political unity can be created from Bottom-Up in which the people are first given an opportunity to form their own states before a political federation is formed on that basis. That would be a true expression of the peoples’ right to self-determination and popular sovereignty instead of the elitist manipulations.

Prof. Nabudere is the Executive Director, Marcus Garvey Pan-Afrikan Institute, Mbale