We need an overhaul of our electoral, political culture

On Friday, July 6, I took my nephew back to school after a suspension over disobeying school rules. The school is found on Mityana Road. As I came back, I noticed that the entire route, especially in the trading centres, LCI campaigns were going on.
We met with several motorcades of aspirants. Not just aspirants for chairmanship. Aspirants for other positions on the LCI executive had motorcades too. We saw several huge campaign posters for candidates. We witnessed several rallies being addressed and overheard candidates making all sorts of promises to their supporters. On the side of the supporters, it was time to harvest again. So, they flocked campaign rallies not necessarily because the candidates articulated ideas for shaping a better future, but because they needed to make quick bucks.

Back in my party, as an official on the politburo of People’s Progressive Party (PPP), I began receiving telephone calls from party candidates desperately asking for financial assistance to facilitate their campaigns. The calls came from across the country. A specific one from Pader District was more succinct and honest. The candidate for chairman LCI wanted some money to buy alcohol for his supporters so they may vote for him.

The telephone calls from party candidates also alleged that NRM candidates had been given a lot of money for campaigns and as a consequence, Opposition and independent candidates, who didn’t have money, were not being given a listening ear by the electorate. Certainly, as an active participant in Uganda’s politics and a two time candidate, I have no reason whatsoever, to doubt my party candidates’ assertions.
I have variously stated here and in many other fora, that Uganda’s electoral democracy is a fallacy that was designed to hoodwink Ugandans and the international community to believe that the people of Uganda are free to participate in the electoral process to choose their leaders and ultimately determine their destiny. For the international community, more specifically, this narrative was created to win aid funds to oil regime survival machines.

The truth, however, is that Ugandans are completely alienated and disenfranchised from the electoral process. It needs to be noted though, that the current nature and style of disenfranchisement is different from the one that was orchestrated in the earlier centuries. Modern time disenfranchisement changed form and shape. It has little to do with the franchise itself. It is about making the franchise ineffectual in shaping a people’s destiny. That is the tragedy of Uganda.
The NRM regime introduced transactional politics in Uganda. This, consequently, bred a new culture that has by and large commercialised our elections. The culture of scratch my back and I scratch yours. The idea of give me and I give you. As a result, Ugandans participate in the electoral process only to take care of their basic existential needs of salt, sugar, soap, etc. This is because the electorate knows that elected leaders will only feather their nests after the vote.

In other countries, elections offer the people a chance to renew their hope in a better future. This is rooted in the idea that elections allow new leaders with superior ideas for better governance to emerge. But, in our case, elections are mere rituals with little effect on the prospect of improving our lives. Therefore, we do not participate in electoral exercises because we believe elections offer the opportunity to build a new and better future for ourselves and our children.

In fact, we have been reduced to the scenario of chicken and insects in a bottle. We know what free, fair and credible elections can do to improve our chance at a better life and future, but we are unable to achieve anything through them. Depressingly, the same elections that we detest, keep the political (both NRM and Opposition) class in power. As a consequence, the political class continues living in opulence as ordinary citizens wither away in poverty.

In the final analysis, we have become, as Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, former President of Tanzania once put it, a man eat man society, with little regard or care for fellow countrymen. This state of affairs must be halted by a national dialogue that should among other things, overhaul the current electoral system and political culture.