Road to 2016 polls: case of a typical political chessboard

The art of politics is no different from the game of chess. Both thrive on invention.

Yet for all the striking similarities, there are moves on the political board whose application – despite repetitive action – always ensures victory over an opponent. Niccolo Machiavelli, an Italian political philosopher, who in his book, The Prince, advances the tenet; “If an injury has to be done to man, it should be so severe that his vengeance needs not to be feared.”
The road to the 2016 elections is already a busy one and the pieces on the chess board are already in motion. Each political party has had increased intensity in political lobbying.
As such, political actors are traversing the country, in an attempt to make their agenda known.
Uganda’s election year, that is; the 12 months that precede elections, falls between February 2015 and February 2016, since Uganda’s polling is usually in that month.
However, as election date draws nearer, there are those salient elements that stand out.
From violence and intimidation, voter registration issues, attacks on Opposition to party weakening defections, the list goes on. And it is happening again.
Last month, FDC women leader Ingrid Turinawe and a group that was heading to Parliament were arrested and in the scuffle, Hamidah Nasimbwa was injured, and rushed to Kasangati Health Centre.
Human Rights Watch (HRW), an international non-governmental organisation that conducts research and advocacy on human rights, has since 2000, documented reports on events that preceded elections and transpired during the year preceding elections.
Their findings denote a pattern, a similarity in events, most of which have been replayed over and over again in each election year. We take a look at some of the events.

Arrests

A Human Rights Watch report on the 2001 election points to several cases of unlawful arrests in the run up to elections as one of the major contributing factors in the crippling of the opposition during the presidential race.
Most notable being the widely published incident of Maj Rabwoni Okwir, the head of Dr Besigye’s Reform Agenda’s youth desk, who was violently arrested and detained without charge. He was arrested by armed plain clothed military and police personnel at at Entebbe Airport.
The reports also points out several other cases where the army also detained Besigye campaigner Hajji Ramathan Kuwonge on February 12. Other Besigye campaigners were arrested in Mukono, outside Kampala, on February 14.
Other cases that year involved the arrests of four campaign agents for presidential candidate Aggrey Awori were arrested.

The cycle
The 2005 election also did not pass without media intimidation and caveats on freedom expression.
Editor James Tumusiime and then reporter Semujju Ibrahim Nganda of the privately-owned Weekly Observer were charged for promoting sectarianism by reporting that FDC had accused the President and three top military officials of persecuting Dr Besigye on ethnic grounds.
In 2011, police intimidated, arrested, and detained 16 people who distributed a joint statement on behalf of several Ugandan nongovernmental organisations. Some were held as long as overnight, though no charges were filed.
Last month, the homes of Kampala Lord Mayor Erias Lukwago and Opposition strongman Kizza Besigye were surrounded by police not to mention the street scuffles that saw Besigye’s car towed away.
“We must break the cycle. We must do everything possible to do so. And to do that, operations of the state must be institutionalised and constitutional order restored,” Erias Lukwago points out.
Legal perspective
Dr Goloba Mutebi, a political analyst however, argues that the tactics being employed by the opposition may not help their cause in averting the heavy handedness they have suffered at the hands of state enforcement organs like police.
“Laws are in place to restrict the activities of the opposition. The opposition on the other hand does not agree with these laws yet the government has to enforce them.”
“The government prescribes where the opposition holds their rallies. For example they are not allowed to hold rallies at the Constitutional Square and yet in the run up to next year’s elections, there is a lot of excitement so there will be run-ins with police over the next couple of months,” he adds
“I think those restrictions much as unfair to some extent, do not affect electoral outcomes. Would their campaigning at Constitutional Square make a difference if say, they campaigned at Kololo airstrip which has been availed to them on occasion? I don’t think so.”

Assault and intimidation

Human Rights Watch reports acknowledge that there have been serious concerns on lack of a level playing field in Uganda’s electoral race.
It points to supporters of rival candidates threatening and attacking each other, but it, however, notes that the opposition has borne the largest brunt.
“The most notorious attempt by the government to intimidate the political Opposition has been the criminal charges brought against Dr Kizza Besigye, in both civil and military courts. The power of the State brought to bear against the leading opponent to the incumbent president resulted in diverting the attention, resources and time of the opposition from the campaign,” read its 2006 presidential electoral report in part.
When Dr Besigye returned to Uganda on October 26, 2005, he was arrested and charged, alongside others, with treason relating to his alleged rebel activities in exile, and with rape. He was confined to Luzira Prison in Kampala.
On November 22, then Internal Affairs Minister Dr Ruhakana Rugunda announced a ban on all public rallies, demonstrations, assemblies or seminars related to the trial of Dr Besigye. The following day Information minister Dr James Nsaba Buturo banned talk shows and media debates on Besigye’s case, claiming that they might prejudice the trial.
Shortly after his acquittal following a series of court appearances, General David Tinyefunza, then coordinator of security services and presidential adviser told a radio show on February 2 that the army would not accept “this business of being ordered by [judges].”
In January, the Daily Monitor quoted President Museveni while addressing a rally in Rukiga County, Kabale District as having said; “The Opposition are like wolves lurking around to tear Uganda apart. I will not allow them because I have support of the majority of Ugandans and my army.”
“Why can’t they tell Ugandans alternatives on wealth creation instead of preaching the gospel that I must leave power? If I go, will you get out of poverty?” Mr Museveni charged before adding: “I will not give them chance.”
“This regime wants to instil fear and terror so that by election time, Ugandans have lost all hope in the power of the ballot to effect change,” Lukwago says.
“People must seize their sovereignty. People have become aloof.”

Bloating of voter registers

•Human Rights Watch (HRW) also points out a trend in the number of registered voters being overly high over the years. In its 2001 report, HRW reveals that of Uganda’s 22 million people, 11.6 million were registered to vote in the presidential elections.
•The report cites a disparity between Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS), the government body responsible for coordinating the production of statistics, over number of eligible voters not being 11.6 million as stated by the Electoral Commission (EC).
“Over 50 per cent of Uganda’s population of 21.4 million is under fifteen years of age, and the number of eligible voters is estimated at 8.9 million,” it reads in part.
•The curious case of an overly large number coupled with ghost voters also registered in the proceeding elections in 2006 and 2011 where either parties – opposition and government – accused each other of creating non-existent voters.
•Uganda’s population has since doubled and now stands at an estimated 37 million according to online country economy statistics.
•With the recently concluded ID registration and voter register update, Electoral Commission’s application of a biometric system to verify identity, observers now hope that the issue of ghosts on the voter register will be a thing of the past. That, however, remains to be seen.

IMBALANCE IN CAMPAIGN RESOURCES

Makerere University Political Science lecturers; Dr Sabiti Makara, Dr Julius Kiiza, Dr William Muhumuza and Dr Paul Omach in their book: In A Hybrid Regime: Revisiting The 2011 Ugandan Polls, alarmingly noted that election is unlikely to cause political change or bring about democratisation in Uganda owing to the unfavourable political climate that precedes elections.
They pointed out an example of the 2011 elections where there was massive distribution of financial and material incentives with the NRM being cited for the misuse of state resources
Before the presidential elections in 2006, Members of Parliament are said to have been persuaded by Shs5m to extend term limits to allow the incumbent to stand again and attain a ‘kisanjja’ (Third term).
And in 2011, the country witnessed a repeat of the same, as Parliament approved payments of Shs20 million to each of its nearly 330 members as part of a supplementary budget allocation raising eyebrows as to why it was issued a few weeks before elections.
So once again this year, the spotlight will be not only on the Parliament, Electoral Commission, but also on the government, and Opposition, who – going by past trends – may be in for a reckoning.
“All I can stay is, we have experienced this before and we are ready. We have hardened our skins ahead of 2016,” Lukwago concludes.