Those who voted Museveni into power were not fools

Less than two months after the 1980 general election, Museveni and his comrades so thoroughly despised Milton Obote’s fraudulent “democratic” order that they rejected its Parliament and went to the bush

Our radio station managers know that Ugandans love their voices, so they have arranged for listeners to call into many of the programmes.

On mornings when Impact Radio’s Gyagenda ku Agenda has no studio guest, after the mandatory 15 minutes of adverts, Host/Presenter Semakula spends a full 30 minutes essentially laying out one question. He frames the question, reframes it, then makes adjustments to the same question before coating it with analogies and more layers of the same question.

Talk of loving our voices. Then he triumphantly throws the question to the nation of callers, sometimes to provoke what he calls an “intellectual crisis”, whatever that means. The callers have around 15 minutes; which is all right, since after relaying two or three voices, the rest are generally repetitions or echoes of those.

Gyagenda sometimes hosts RDC Fred Bamwine, a cool gentleman with exemplary radio manners. In the wake of the oil Bill fracas that disrupted Parliament last week, Mr Bamwine has reminded his audience that he had long ago dismissed the Ninth Parliament as a bunch of bayimbi (useless noise-makers); so the November 27 chaos had just vindicated him. The electorate had imposed on the nation a bad deal. Mr Bamwine and his host insisted that the MPs opposed to the government line should have followed the rules guiding parliamentary conduct.

Fair enough. In relatively normal democratic societies, who would not go with that? However, in a semi-dictatorial vampire state like Uganda, the problem is that the MPs cannot freely make a decision that the Executive does not like and get away with it. The MPs cannot be allowed to forget the unspoken code that binds them and the Executive; that when the MPs want to service their greed (allowances, cars), the Executive would comply, and when the Executive wants to service its greed (like in this oil thing), the MPs are not expected to object. Hence President Museveni’s famous notion of the ideal MP, one who sleeps through the debate and wakes up to vote for the NRM (or, rather, Museveni’s) position.

The President will argue, play off different factions, cajole, intimidate, give cash, or use a combination of these things until he gets his way. The bottom line: President Museveni does not lose. But even with the greed code at the back of our minds, the blatant abuse of Parliament by the Executive reflects the contempt in which the ruling clique holds citizen.

This week, diehard loyalist Bamwine acknowledged that a minister’s stance would be a reflection of the President’s; but he saw nothing wrong with that. He narrated how lovingly and patriotically Museveni had nursed the oil project. (I thought the idea that the man who buys the Christmas goat must personally serve the meat on the big day was outmoded.) Anyhow, as the harvest approached, these ungrateful MPs and some other Ugandans were saying they could not trust Museveni with the oil money! They even seemed to forget that the President had only been recently returned to power with almost 70 per cent of the vote!

Sure? Very well; but then, to all those who repeatedly bombard radio audiences with that February 2011 statistic, 69 per cent: It is disingenuous to dismiss Parliament and mock the voters who returned the House’s NRM majority while upholding the President and celebrating the electorate that gave him victory? It was exactly the same voters who turned up on polling day. They could not be fools when voting their MPs and suddenly turn into geniuses when voting the President.

Less than two months after the 1980 General Election, Museveni and his comrades so thoroughly despised Milton Obote’s fraudulent “democratic” order that they rejected its Parliament and went to the bush. They successfully sold the idea of an armed outlaw as a patriot, and a Member of Parliament as a traitor. They should be grateful that after almost two years since the 2011 General Election, those who despise the present “democratic” order are only walking to work and venting their frustration in bouts of parliamentary chaos.

Allan Tacca is a novelist and socio-political
commentator. altaccaone@gmail.com