UGANDA'S FLAWED ELECTIONS: M7 speaks out on 1980 elections

Muwanga's government refused to amend the electoral law, hoping to use its loopholes to cheat through double voting, switching ballot boxes, false counting, gerrymandering constituencies, hooliganism and so on. My own constituency in Nyabushozi was gerrymandered. Taking advantage of the fact that voting was likely to be on a religious basis, the sub-counties of Nyakashashara, Sanga and Kashongi were removed from Nyabushozi and made part of another constituency.

These sub-counties were mainly Protestant, cattle-keeping areas, and they were exchanged for Ibanda county, which is occupied by Catholics. Both the UPC and DP were involved in these practices in my area as both parties had an interest in making it difficult for me to win. By the time the elections were held, it was clear that whatever the outcome, there could be no satisfactory result which would benefit the country. All the UPC wanted was the facade of an election in order to legitimise the coup they were to carry out.

It was tragic to see incapable reactionaries taking our country towards civil conflict while thinking they were being very smart. The UPC declared that they would take power whether people voted for them or not. The moment we came to the conclusion that the old political groups had not learnt any lesson from our past history, we decided to give them enough time to make fools of themselves and then we would discipline them from our own base. In effect, we were saying: 'OK.

Let this farce run its course. Then we shall play our own music, where there is no cheating, where there is only conviction. Manoeuvres are all very good for the air- conditioned room, but when it comes to mosquitoes, manoeuvres don't work very well.' If we had not allowed the farce to run its course, we would have been branded as troublemakers.

One complicating factor was the presence of Tanzanian forces. We did not want to fight the Tanzanians - unless of course we had to, as in the end we did.
But the UPC were using our reluctance to fight the Tanzanians, to push through their schemes. Without the Tanzanian presence, the UPC would not have been able to carry on their games.

The UPC had always been composed of shallow politicians who thought that intrigue was the art of politics - the 'dirty game', of which Obote was supposed to be the 'master tactician', where tactics meant intrigue and double-talk. Obote, for instance, gave the equally shallow and opportunistic Kabaka Yekka grouping the promise that they would be allowed to keep Buganda as their own, with the freedom to exploit the peasants, denying them a voice.

There would be no direct elections in Buganda, unlike in other parts of the country. Buganda would have its own High Court and its own police. There were to be Baganda 'ministers' at
Mengo, and so on. These arrangements held echoes of the intrigues and double- talk of 1962-6.

Obote wanted power at any price. He thought it was a small matter to promise the reactionary forces in Buganda all they wanted and, when the Tanzanians had departed, turn against the agreement, relying on the army which, thanks to Ojok, was again dominated by people from his area. Yet again, the unprincipled alliance between the UPC and KY proved tragic for our country and was a testimony to the UPC's treachery, political incompetence and ideological bankruptcy.

This, then, was the configuration of the political forces in Uganda immediately following the overthrow of Amin. If the fight had been left to Ugandans alone, without the Tanzanian presence, it would not have been possible for the UPC to split the UNLF. But now, with the elections rigged, as we had predicted, we had to start preparing to fulfil our pledge to go to the bush and fight the injustices that had been inflicted upon our country.