Abdul Nadduli, just kill two million Ugandans

The nullification of Uhuru Kenyatta’s August 8 re-election got very wide media coverage.

In one interview, a very articulate young Kenyan law student told the BBC that she had voted for Uhuru Kenyatta, but she was satisfied with the ruling of the Supreme Court.
She argued that she did not want her president to have come through a flawed process that in effect rendered him illegitimate.

If I understood her, she was implying that a candidate can bend the rules, manipulate the system, and secure a ‘victory’ that leaves him undignified. She did not want her president to be despised.

Bending rules. Talking on Simba FM on Tuesday evening, October 31, Mr Simeo Nsubuga (MP) probably thought he was saying something intelligent when he reasoned that since many of the distinguished members of the Elders Forum opposed to lifting the presidential age-75 limit had supported lifting the two-term limit in 2005, their objections to the Magyezi Bill should be recorded but ultimately ignored.

If I understood Mr Nsubuga, it is all right to pursue a Museveni-driven evil in 2017 because other people supported a similar evil in 2005.
In my stupidity, I guess he is saying that he, like the Elders, should be given the benefit of 12-year hindsight to regret his present course of action. Presumably, in 2029 he will clean his thinking as they have cleaned theirs in 2017.

In a nutshell, the only rule worth upholding is: Be a mercenary today, and a saint tomorrow.
When State minister Without Portfolio Abdul Nadduli was in Masaka recently, he, too, probably thought he was saying something exceedingly intelligent when he challenged those opposed to lifting the age limit to start a guerrilla war.

In my stupidity again, I guess the teaspoonful of power Nadduli was given just a year ago has already gone to his head.
Yet, why not, Nadduli; go the whole hog. As a thinker and NRM ideologue, you are already marvellous. But you could rise even higher, if you think bigger.
The Oboteist idea of encouraging opponents to go to the bush and following them there was very disruptive between 1981and 1986. The national economy suffered in ways Gen Museveni may not want now.
Why not develop plans around just the key factor, the statistics of casualties? Death was the greatest enterprise during the Bush War.

More than 500,000 people were killed. But our population has more than doubled, and the world has many other distractions now. So you could go for two million deaths. Set up concentration camps. Gas chambers; firing squads. The enemies of ‘Lift age-75’ are conspicuous.

They wear red ribbons, red caps, red ties. Many are already on CCTV footage. You can pick them like grasshoppers. Just eliminate them. And the NRM (to use your word) will thus “consolidate” its power beyond contest.
That policy would be cheaper than putting down a guerrilla uprising, and less shabby than the ongoing parliamentary circus.

As things stand, the Bill champion, Mr Magyezi, wishes the Committee on Legal and Parliamentary Affairs was composed of his appointees. Ministers are either hiding or running away from their voters. In the villages, NRM MPs are being humiliated. In the NRM Caucus, the party chief hates the faces of those who want him to retire. And money; the bribes; the stink. A ‘victory’ in the House can only be engineered.

If that Kenyan law student were watching, she would marvel how all these distinguished people are happy to look so undignified.

Mr Tacca is a novelist, socio-political commentator.
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