Opposition’s biggest challenge is disunity in leadership – Besigye

You recently inaugurated the “People’s Assembly” and you say you will soon inaugurate lower assemblies. How were they constituted?
The people’s assemblies are part of the people’s government which came into being in 2016 because we did not recognise the government that assumed power [on May 12, 2016] since it did not do so through the constitutional processes provided for in our Constitution. The constitutional processes provide for an election that is free and fair and that follows the Constitution.

The Constitution clearly says that after announcing results, every candidate has power, has a right to challenge what has been announced. It is a right that I was not availed in the last election, which means the constitutional process of that election is negated. An election does not get over by announcement [of the winner] by the Electoral Commission; it does when candidates accept what has been announced.

If a candidate has been denied that right, it means the Constitution has been overthrown. That is what happened because even before the results were announced, I was under illegal detention and we got a court judgment confirming that indeed I was under illegal detention. I was under illegal detention because they knew they had not won, and that they had failed to capture what we had as evidence of our winning. They tried; they invaded our headquarters and took it over, hoping to impound anything that we can present as evidence of our winning. They failed. We up to day, very assertively, claim that we have evidence that we won the election, and that Mr Museveni is in office illegally, illegitimately.

Having then usurped power by force, using the coercive forces to detain the legitimate winner, my colleagues took the right decision to form the government that we should have formed [people’s government]. Of course, they came to prison and consulted me. So the people’s government as a concept is the government of the disenfranchised people who have expressed a will that is overthrown.

They can go ahead and form a government because at the end of the day power belongs to the people and that is exactly what we did. It has two objectives. One is to continue interacting with those people that have been disenfranchised on how, even under captivity, we can solve some of the problems that bedevil them.

We have been having challenges of land grabbing; grabbed by those in power, injurious taxes and so on. We continue interacting with people to get their will at all times and that is where the assemblies become instrumental because the assemblies are representations of those people and those assemblies come right from the grassroots, the village councils up to the national assembly and they are already there. It is not that we are just forming them.

People who contested and indeed were disenfranchised are there, and others who want to participate in representing people come up. That is the background where this comes from. The second role of the people’s government is to organise and push out of office the illegitimate holders of power.

Isn’t it a little too late for all this?
The people’s assembly was launched rather late for the simple reason that we recognised in 2016 that as a result of the elections we had gone through those who were aspiring for change had been separated into different electoral platforms and we thought that, especially to do the second part of our role to force out the illegitimate regime, we need to act all of us in concert. Those we were with us and those who were not with us in the elections.
We spent a lot of time and effort consulting our colleagues on how the conduct of this post-election struggle under that concept of the people’s government would be carried out. That was one of the reasons for the delay; consultations went on and on for quite some time because there would be new developments.
You keep on consulting but work did not stop, we were only consulting before launching. Secondly, some friends of Uganda thought there was room for a negotiated settlement – that since the disagreement was over the outcome of the election – that maybe we could have mediation over that, so that we get a process that causes us to agree with what came out of 2016.
There was a process of dialogue, many processes of dialogue with that aim, and we wanted to give those processes a chance so that we don’t crystalise our blocs, so that we can give room for dialogue; and indeed there was extensive activity on the dialogue process. Our demand was that there should be an audit of the elections so that we are all satisfied with what has been declared. The regime first accepted in principle that we should have an audit but later backtracked on how it should be carried out and it was left in limbo because we had agreed on how the audit should be carried.

Is that process dead?
I consider it dead, because there was an agreement that an audit should be carried out, but the modalities of carrying it out were never successful and so I don’t think that with the developments that have since taken place that process can take off.
These are the two reasons why what we are doing now was not done in 2016. The launch, the publicity, the public exposure; but not that the work stopped. Not at all. Work has been continuing vigorously throughout the three years by the (people’s) government.

You say you consulted and had discussions but the people’s government was eventually only constituted by people you have always been working with, and none from other groups and NRM…
The reason that indeed they are not there in itself means that we are not at par, otherwise they would have been there. So although there were extensive consultations, and nobody says they were not consulted, there was no concurrence on how we proceed. Considering that time is not our best ally, and that we need to undertake rigorous action this year, we now decided to proceed as we did.

That suggests it is difficult to forge unity within the Opposition ranks. Why?
It is not just within the opposition ranks. You must understand that every single individual has his own political position even within the same political platform. Within all these parties, every individual has a different point of view. What a political party does is that it aggregates these views and creates a common denominator. So we have a lot of disagreements, but we come together on areas that we agree on. That shows you how difficult it is to unite with those that are on a different platform altogether.
I think there are two main challenges in uniting political actors that want change. The first is having an ideological consensus. In other words, what is it you want to do that you are uniting? How do you want to do it? Thirdly, who are the actors in doing it? These three things are highly debatable and quite often it is not easy to bring people to that consensus. Secondly, unity of the Opposition is the biggest threat to the regime. The regime also works overtime, not just 24/7, to ensure that unity doesn’t happen. If it does, it endangers it.
We have both internal and exogenous challenges, but you know at the end of the day these challenges have not been disastrous because they only exist in the leadership. We have a strange situation where Ugandans who want change are ahead of their leaders, and this is how it has been. Leaders actually follow the population. The Ugandan population is very resolved, united in demanding for change, and they know very clearly what they want. What frustrates people are the leaders, and you know the leaders when they fail to make up their minds on getting together, the people make up their minds and look for the leadership that offers them the best opportunity and go with that.

There is this old accusation against you that you are clinging to the leadership of the opposition...
[Laughter] As I have told you, the population is united. They are not united behind a person, no. They are united behind an agenda that they think offers them the best chance for change. It is not about the person; the population is not bothered with Besigye or who; they are bothered with what it is we are trying to do and whether it works in their interest. If what they think works in their interest is what I am leading, then they will appear to support me because that is what they support. People are not following individuals; they are following our struggles, which struggle offers them the best chance and if there is a leader who is championing the cause which they think gives them the best hope, they go with that leader.
If today what I am championing does not give them the best hope, they will not come with me. This was best exemplified here in Kampala, especially, but also in the whole country. Those following Hajj Nasser Ntege Ssebaggala – he had a huge following and at some stage he may be thought they were following him, and that if he went in a different direction, that was not in the line with what the people wanted, that they would follow him. They didn’t. People don’t just follow individuals, what would they follow me for? They follow what we say and do. I have no office that I hold. Leadership is not an office; you can have the highest office but not be a leader.
Leadership is inspiring people to solve their problems. How do I cling? You see, Museveni clings to power. First of all, he clings to an office; he uses that office to terrorise others because that office gives him power over guns of the army, police. I don’t have guns. Museveni clings to power because he has power over our wealth; he controls the wealth of Uganda and uses it to buy support. I don’t control wealth of anybody; none. I saw some people saying that I also give envelops. If I was to give envelops, it would be from my personal wealth because I don’t tax anybody; I don’t control any funds of anybody. So what am I clinging on to? Journalists should be interrogating people who say those kinds of things. Journalists should help the country to know the truth.
If somebody says something that can’t be substantiated, they should take them on and expose them. Anybody who says Besigye is clinging to power, I want them to be exposed so that we know what he is clinging on to.

Why do you think you have been attacked from within the Opposition and the ruling establishment?
Needless to say, for those who hold our country hostage, whom we are fighting, there is a bitter war going on and we are rallying the population to liberate themselves from them. They certainly have every right and interest in destroying those who want to remove them, and they will use their influence in the media because government controls a greater section of the media.

But it is happening on social media too!
That is even easier to dominate. You can recruit as many people and push them there. Part of what we see in the media is from those who are threatened by what we do, but there is also an element of people who are possibly in the Opposition and frustrated that they have not been paid attention to the way they expect to be attended to, because I have heard a person like Abed Bwanika bitter that he has been a candidate, he is a Muganda and Baganda don’t vote for him.
Some of those are bitter because they have not attracted the attention of the population. My advice to them is that they shouldn’t be bitter with me; they should simply focus on what the people want. If they focus enough on what people want, people will pay attention to them. They think that by attacking me and possibly destroying me, people will pay attention to them. No. I am not their [people’s] problem. I am not grabbing their land; I am not imposing taxes on them; I am not frustrating the markets for their produce.
Take the example, last year the Americans discovered for us that Museveni is corrupt. They brought all the evidence to show that a man brought a bribe to him. So we have at the very least very credible evidence of a crime in State House … we have evidence, you know! Nobody is focusing on that to say this person who is causing us problems all these years, all the investigative capacity instead of running after [Bank of Uganda Governor Tumusiime] Mutebile etc because they derive their power from this one [President Museveni].
Now we have evidence against Museveni. Nobody including the media [is talking about this]. The least I heard was a journalist asking Museveni about [Foreign Affairs minister Sam] Kuteesa [who was also accused of receiving a bribe from a Chinese businessman in the US], he was shy to ask about his own corruption because he knows Museveni himself is accused, and with evidence. Nobody is asking the person who is causing us problems for 33 years.
They think that by focusing on Besigye, the problem will understand them. How? (laughs) If you are not focusing on what is their problem, how will they understand you? Yes I can understand the frustration of some of the people on the Opposition, but it is a self-inflicted frustration because they are not doing the right things.

Listening to their frustrations, do you sometimes fear that you may not fulfil the objectives of your struggle?
No, no, I cannot be frustrated. The struggle is about doing what needs to be done until it is done. That is the whole, the main inspiration we have. That there is something to be done.
We believe we are in captivity and our struggle is to get out of captivity and provided every day you wake up to do what is needed to be done to achieve that, you can’t be frustrated, whether it is actually achieved or not, you have to struggle to the extent you can.
And if it is not achieved, somebody will take over from there. Some struggles are not fulfilled by those who start them. In any case, I am not the one who started this struggle. It is a struggle that has been going on; I only joined it. I will do what I can; others will continue with the struggle. I cannot be frustrated at all because I have conviction in what I am doing, and in my case I think what we have done has achieved a lot, and rather than being frustrated, I am actually encouraged every day about what is taking place.

When you first opposed Museveni in 1999/2000, did it occur to you that in 2019 he could still be in power?
The mental attitude which I believe I entered this struggle with is that you set out to do your best to achieve results at the earliest possible time, but you also prepare yourself for the worst situation as you hope for the very best. When we went out in 2001, we thought we could cause change in 2001.
We didn’t go there just that change will come in 20 years. No, we thought change would come in 2001, but also we were prepared in mind to struggle on for as long as it takes until it happens, and so that is why some people think after an electoral exercise we would be deflated, give up. Never. We believe that we have a right cause, a right approach and we believe that we must engage ourselves until the problem is solved.
I must tell you that among other things, I am a believer in God. I am not atheist; I am not one of those people who think that everything happens because of our will; we the human beings. No, I think there is a will of God which acts in its own time; but the will of God will come to those who are doing what needs to be done.

You have declared 2019 the “year of action”. What form will this action take, and when do we get to see it?

The year of action is a culmination of three cardinal stages of this struggle. The first stage is awareness of Ugandans, awareness of this captivity in which we live, awareness of the gross injustice that they live with and awareness that they have capacity to change it.
This is the process that takes the longest time in a struggle for people to know that there is a problem, and that they have the ability to solve it on their own actions. We have been going through conscientisation process, mobilisation processes and we believe that as of today, the greatest majority of Ugandans know the problem and also know they can remove it, and it is them to remove it. Previously, even when people got to know that there is a problem, they believed somebody should remove it for them.

They would say; we pray for you; carry on; and fight for us not them fighting for themselves. So we went through that phase of people knowing there is a problem but someone should fight it for them. [US president Donald] Trump should come; the other one should come now we believe that the greatest majority know there is a problem and that they should be part of a solution of that problem. We believe that we have significantly achieved that objective.

Secondly, is that the people who are now conscious of the problem and how it has to be removed must be organised so that they are able to act together, to speak together they act in concert. That requires they have an elaborate network of leadership that can bring them together to act. That is again what we have been building. We have built an elaborate network of leadership both seen and unseen.
The seen leadership is highly vulnerable to attack, to compromise, to arrests and detention depriving the people of leadership. So we have both, the seen and the unseen and it is built through an elaborate effort and we believe we significantly achieved that by the end of 2018.
The third stage is then to take action that is why we call this year the year of action and the actions we take are fairly easy to understand. They are actions to weaken those holding our power and to continue to strengthen those without power.

The actions we take are non-violent, it is very important, because then again the regime propaganda and all other people’s kind of propaganda tend to suggest that when you refuse to cooperate with the regime you are violent because that is what we do largely, disobey the regime, don’t cooperate with it. It is our right.
So our actions are centred around disempowering the regime and the empowering the population through non-violent actions, which we are going to be undertaking this year because we believe the country is set.

The lingering weakness or challenge we have is disunity in our leadership, the leadership of pro-change actors, there is still lack of leadership but we are working overtime to make sure that that weakness too is either eliminated or contained so it doesn’t undermine what is being done.