It’s sad that religious leaders, intellectuals are silent on age limit talk – Salaam

You have lost two elections in less than two years… (interrupts)
What elections? I never lost any elections. The level of militarisation of the electoral process would not qualify them as elections. If it is not free and fair, it is not an election.
In the general election in 2016, my victory could match the level of rigging. A formula to rig elections was already written in the computer with an NRM victory template.
This was executed in the presidential elections and in selected constituencies all over the country. There was no way I could beat the IT that manufactured election results in the general elections. In the by-election, they decided to militarise the process.
So, what next?
Salaam Musumba is an active political actor. I am the vice chair of Forum for Democratic Change.
Being in or outside Parliament must be understood from the perspective of where we are as a country. We are not holding the elections envisaged under the Constitution and the laws governing elections.
In my heart, I am satisfied that I didn’t lose elections but saddened that our people lost their energy, enthusiasm and hope.
Have you considered contesting for FDC’s party president?
I have been approached by some members. Those who have approached me said they would like to promote a woman... But I am not ready for it now. But I am impassioned by their gender agenda.
One of the aspiring candidates for FDC party president was reported to have been arrested
That’s true. Amuriat Oboi was picked as he was doing a ‘whispering’ campaign to support his candidature for FDC party president.
He was picked together with over 70 other people and whisked to Nalufenya [Police Station in Jinja], which has become a Guantanamo Bay of Uganda.
President Museveni is working for the death of multiparty democracy in the country. He stifles the emergence of new leaders and the survival of political parties. And this is against the Constitution he swore to uphold and protect.
It is very regrettable that in 1996 some of us believed that even at his worst, Museveni would not repeat what Obote and Amin had been accused of doing.
But you paint a picture of despondency and hopelessness…
Unfortunately that’s the material reality on the ground. We are now back to 1980. But God cannot let these people treat Ugandans like this indefinitely. Somebody will be coming.

Could you be the one?
No. I am not the one. But I am convinced the country needs a leader who can stand up to these bullies and talk to them in a language they understand. Otherwise I see no end to this madness.

You could be accused of rallying the population to war…
Ugandans are already at war. We are in an economic war, political war, social and cultural war, deprivation war.
People are dying; only that the deaths are less dramatic than war deaths. Do you know how disastrous treated mosquito nets are to the population? Haven’t you heard of the allergies attributed to the drugs used to treat mosquito nets?
If there was sentinel surveillance and proper reporting, Ugandans would be scandalised by the disaster of the treated mosquito nets. In the first place, did we really need that level of toxicity in the mosquito nets? Who supplied those mosquito nets? Who tested the mosquito nets?
Who of the six aspirants for the FDC party president will you support?
I recognise their different styles of leadership. I will give each of them a chance to present themselves to me: What do you want to do now? Where do you want to lead me? And how do you take me there? That’s what will determine who to vote.
I have grown very impatient. I would like to vote a leader who will mobilise this country into action. Because what this regime is proving to us is that our reliance on the constitutional means is a joke.
Look at the Constitutional Amendment Bill (on land). What is the regime trying to cure? They just want to dispossess and disadvantage people. One person wants to marshal authority over the most important factor of the production chain.
On the unseemly debate on the removal of the constitutional age limit for presidential candidates, FDC has not issued a statement of protest, has it?
There is nothing worth an official statement. We saw this a long time ago. It is a project of life presidency being implemented piecemeal.
It started with the removal of the two-term limit for the president. You know our Constitution was the result of some kind of national consensus. And these people don’t care about anything national. It is about individual aggrandisement.
In 2005, I was at the forefront of defending the Constitution when they removed presidential term limit. So, I know the machinations and craftiness.
MPs were given Shs5m to remove the presidential term limit. Now I hear each MP will receive Shs500m for the removal of age limit. And with this amount, MPs are more eager (than Museveni) to remove the age limit provision.
It is depressing that our religious leaders are silent. I grew in president Idd Amin’s regime. President Amin was a bully. But we had Cardinal Nsubuga from the Catholic Church, we had Janani Luwum, Archbishop of the Anglican Church, we had Bishop Festo Kivengere an evangelist of the Anglican Church. These men stood up to president Amin and told him he was taking the wrong path. A man like Archbishop Luwum paid the ultimate price, he was murdered by the regime.
Where are today’s religious leaders? Their silence is deafening. They have exchanged their moral leadership for gifts from the regime. They have chosen to serve gold not God.
But you are harsh on religious leaders…
You have civil society pioneering a national dialogue. But have you heard any religious leaders opening their mouths? We only have the lone and desperate cries of Fr Gaetano Batanyenda. For a country whose motto is ‘For God and My Country’, the silence of religious leaders is disturbing.
And another silent group is the intellectual class. Where are the professors?
But Mr Museveni has intimated that there is no proposal for the removal of age limit
Trust his word at your own peril.

Has the FDC leadership discussed the year 2021 and beyond?
There is nothing to speculate about. We are still contesting the stolen 2016 presidential elections, which we won. We are still demanding for an audit of the electoral process. We are still pursuing a transitional political settlement.
We are pursuing all this to avert the inevitable calamity that’s going to befall our country economically, politically and socially. If we don’t resolve these accumulated failures, even 2021 may have no meaning to Ugandans.

From the Archives returns next week