The Besigye factor in 2016 polls

On Thursday April 30, the 93.3 KFM’s morning show, “D’Mighty Breakfast”, conducted a poll of its listeners to determine whom they would vote as president of Uganda if a general election were held that day.
The voting was by live phone calls into the on-air studio, as well as on the KFM Facebook page.
The KFM returning officer for the day, Chris Obore, announced the following provisional results:

Brig Muhoozi Kainerugaba, 0 votes; Janet Museveni, 0 votes; Maj Gen Mugisha Muntu, 1 vote; Gen David Sejusa, 2, Olara Otunnu, 5; Norbert Mao, 6; Amama Mbabazi, 7, Rebecca Kadaga, 11; Yoweri Museveni, 30 and Dr Kizza Besigye, 90. The invalid votes were 12.
A number of listeners tried to call in to vote twice and others also tried to vote multiple times on Facebook but were caught by the presenters and their votes cancelled.
The KFM morning crew, Ben Mwine, Aisha Alibhai and Chris Obore, contradicted themselves and stressed at the end of the polling that these were only results from central Uganda, which the KFM broadcast signal covers.

First, KFM also streams or “broadcasts” live over the Internet on its website. Secondly, since the voting was also done via Facebook, Ugandans outside the central Uganda region, as well as Ugandans living abroad could also vote and did vote.
Thirdly, because Kampala is the administrative and business centre of Uganda, almost all Ugandan tribes are represented in the city and indeed, judging from the accents of the listeners calling into the KFM breakfast show, the sample of 160 votes was representative of the country.

In the weeks leading up to the 2011 general election, 88.8 CBS FM, the station affiliated to the Buganda Kingdom, conducted a similar live, on-air phone-in sampling of voter preference.
The government-owned UBC Radio, in a Saturday call-in programme also a few weeks to the 2011 general election also conducted a similar call-in vote to that done on Thursday by KFM and the 2011 vote by CBS FM.
The perception is that KFM, which broadcasts mainly in English, appeals to the slightly more educated, urbanised listener, CBS FM, a mostly Luganda station, appeals to the lower educated, more traditional listener and UBC Radio, being a government-owned station, in theory appeals to generally pro-NRM or pro-government listeners.
In all three phone-in polling exercises, by three different radio stations with three different kinds of listeners, the pattern was consistent: Kizza Besigye leading, followed in second place by Yoweri Museveni.

We can argue over the details of the polling, but whichever way these radio polls are read, the clear fact remains that the two main presidential candidates with a large enough national appeal to win Ugandan presidential elections since 2001 remain Besigye and Museveni.
Even if some, as is inevitable, dismiss the radio polls as unscientific, many of us who stood among the huge crowd between Kajjansi and stretching all the way to Katwe in Kampala in May 12, 2011, waiting for Besigye to return from medical treatment in Nairobi after he was nearly blinded by teargas, saw the results of the radio polling in real life.

May 12, 2011, was the swearing-in ceremony for President-elect Yoweri Museveni at Kololo Airstrip, but the real swearing-in ceremony was of the crowd lining up along the road from Entebbe to Kampala and awaiting Besigye.
While in exile in London in 2013 and even once or twice in Kampala in 2015 since his return from exile, Gen David Sejusa (also called Tinyefuza) has disclosed that Besigye won the 2006 presidential election but was denied his victory. Sejusa has not yet retracted those claims.

If we are interested in the truth, in the real, in the fact, we have to admit that Besigye remains the most popular political figure in Uganda 15 years since he announced his first presidential bid.
One of the problems of Ugandans and of the Western media and governments is that we do not always like to face up to the truth about the politics of the country.
When Jesus Christ stated in the Gospel of John that “Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free”, He wasn’t just being sanctimonious and delivering a nice-sounding sermon.
The truth really does set us free, not just free of guilt. It also frees our intellectual and even economic potential, because truth is truth. Truth is fact.

The Western world usually shows double standards in its dealings with governments and countries of the Third World. They will turn a blind eye to a rigged election, support dictators in oil-rich countries as long as that guarantees steady oil supplies.
But the reason the West so dominates the world is because they largely live by the truth when it comes to their domestic matters, especially economic matters.
They carefully track opinion polls, market surveys, consumer tastes, Internet traffic patterns and adjust their every product design, marketing campaign and political message based on the truth, the fact, of what they gather from the public.

Last year, the drinks company Coca-Cola introduced personalised Coke bottles onto the market, with names like “Mary”, “Ronnie”, Sarah”, “Allan” and so on. The marketing idea was that people are drawn to what seems intimate and personal to them.
Now, given the popularity of Besigye across the country, imagine what would have happened if Coca-Cola had created bottles with the name “Besigye” on them. The true results of the 2001, 2006 and 2011 general elections and of the various radio polling of listeners would have been seen in action.

The “Besigye” Coke bottle would be the best-selling in the country, translating into comfortable profits for Coca-Cola. This is what Christ meant by the truth setting us free and unlocking our full potential.
In the same vein, as the country gears up for the 2016 general election, the Opposition, the Western donor countries, and even the ruling NRM government will have to face up to the truth of Besigye’s popularity and in all the debate about electoral reforms or the idea of an Opposition coalition and joint candidate.

Besigye’s party, the FDC, will have to sit down and think through this truth about Besigye’s popularity. Do they hold a fresh round of voting for their 2016 party flag bearer, given these facts that show Besigye as clearly the most popular national leader?
Or do they refuse to face the truth and pretend to themselves? What if Besigye decides, for instance, to announce he is leaving the FDC to form a new political party with another very popular political leader, Kampala Lord Mayor Erias Lukwago? Would that party not quickly displace the FDC in popularity, given this truth?

When Gen Sejusa disclosed that Besigye had won the 2006 election but was rigged out of his victory, was he just posturing or, with the presidential ambition he is now showing and, as Coordinator of the Intelligence Services in 2006 and knowing the facts that intelligence operatives gather, Gen Sejusa knew that by affirming Besigye’s popularity, he was also shoring up his own support and legitimacy?
If since she came into office in 2011, the executive director of Kampala City Council Authority, Jennifer Ssemakula-Musisi, had made a point of bringing Besigye on her side and used his wide appeal to rally the Kampala residents to clean up the city and support KCCA’s efforts to improve it, the resistance to and resentment of KCCA, would have been much less noticeable.

At the height of the friction in KCCA last year, former Kampala mayor Nasser Sebaggala appeared on the NBS TV breakfast show and made an important point about Lukwago.
Sebaggala said this is where technical and administrative planning and work on Kampala City must go hand in hand with political goodwill.
According to Sebaggala, KCCA was doing the right thing in trying to clear up the city and create plans for a modern look, but without the kind of political leadership that a popularly elected figure like Lukwago would have provided, even the best technical plans by KCCA will fail or not achieve their full effect.

This same principle can be applied to Besigye. To get anything really working in Uganda, the question of popular but marginalised figures and constituencies has to be addressed.
Apart from Besigye, there is another popular constituency called the Mengo government or Buganda Kingdom. The goodwill that Mengo enjoys across Buganda would do a good deal if the central government was not so nervous about Mengo and instead cooperated with it in many public causes, like immunisation campaigns, cleaning up Kampala and others.

Nasser Sebaggala, appearing in a recorded “Barometer” programme on NBS TV on the morning of April 30, also made another important point: he said right now the Opposition has an advantage over President Museveni in what Sebaggala said, in English, is “the mood of the people”.
The “mood of the people”, the KFM morning show poll, the belief in Besigye across most of the country, the sheer frustration with rampant corruption and poor public services in Uganda clearly show that the “mood of the people” is with change after nearly 30 years.
The reluctance to face up to the cold, impersonal truth is a major weakness in Uganda and most other African countries.

Radio station opinion over the years

In the weeks leading up to the 2011 general election, 88.8 CBS FM, the station affiliated with the Buganda Kingdom, conducted a similar live, on-air phone-in sampling of voter preference.
The government-owned UBC Radio, in a Saturday call-in programme also a few weeks to the 2011 general election also conducted a similar call-in vote to that done on Thursday by KFM and the 2011 vote by CBS FM. The perception is that KFM, which broadcasts mainly in English, appeals to the slightly more educated, urbanised listener, CBS FM, a mostly Luganda station, appeals to the lower educated, more traditional listener and UBC Radio, being a government-owned station, in theory appeals to generally pro-NRM or pro-government listeners.
In all three phone-in polling exercises, by three different radio stations with three different kinds of listeners, the pattern was consistent: Kizza Besigye leading, followed in second place by Yoweri Museveni.