The Congress can’t share that bad food with IPC

While announcing the Uganda Peoples Congress (UPC’s) withdrawal from the Inter-Party cooperation (IPC) on Monday, Mr Olara Otunnu, the UPC president, raised many fundamental issues. The deal-breaker was on free and fair elections.

It is a demand UPC won’t negotiate. It is a human right; it is a democratic tenet and was, after all, the main thrust behind the formation of IPC. It was a position so collective that any attempt to backtrack would obviously raise eyebrows.

Many women have, for example, been injured and publicly humiliated in the struggles against President Museveni’s current electoral machine. Religious leaders too, have raised these concerns. The academia and civil society organisations won’t shut up on the same matter. The general public’s feeling is that the current Electoral Commission (EC) cannot, just like in the past, organise credible elections.

Who then are we in UPC to wash our hands in preparation to eat food we have for long declared bad? How are we going to account to all those we have rallied against the EC? Our preoccupation should be on how to engage all democracy-loving Ugandans to demand electoral reforms instead of sending mixed signals that confuse the public on what we stand for.

Unfortunately, when we talk about rejecting the current EC some Ugandans quickly think of conducting demonstrations. The latter may be good for publicity but they don’t necessarily offer the best approach to fighting for our rights. If we demonstrate and the only thing people hear are loud but helpless alarms made as we get tortured, inadvertently, we are advising the public to think twice before joining us.

President Museveni knows this; that is why he has perfected the art of using excessive force. In today’s Uganda, a demonstration quashed by state agents means loss of local support. The era of sympathy votes is gone. Ugandans now look at political economy, social services and stability as the main issues. If your agitations are tailored to attract state terror then the population will, as much they may sympathise with you, evade you.

Opposition and all those who desire change must tone down and return to a deeply moral and civil campaign. This is the benchmark for UPC’s proposition for some kind of national social movement. A movement that has room for, among others, non-political actors like civil society organisations, religious groups, trade unions, professionals and the general citizenry.

Once this has been assembled, the next item is to look for specific action points that would force the NRM government into concessions on the demanded electoral reforms. Such action points must, however, be none confrontational and hence more participatory. We must avoid portraying politics as a risky business before the masses lest we render them passive.

As UPC therefore, two choices lay before us; participating in an election that we know can’t be free and fair, and participating in genuinely free and fair elections. We have chosen the latter because we have not lost hope. We are confident that if we do not engage in acts that undermine this great virtue, Mr Museveni won’t have any option but to allow Ugandans take charge of their national affairs. The option of boycott is never ours. Our is to struggle for reforms and come 2011, Ugandans will participate in free and fair elections.

Mr Nuwagaba is the UPC deputy spokesperson
nuwagabamoses@yahoo.co.uk