Genuine national dialogue necessary

The news that the government, through Deputy Attorney General Mwesigwa Rukutana, has stood in the way of the national dialogue that has for months been planned by religious leaders, the Elders’ Forum and other groups cannot have come as a surprise to many.
As the organisers went about their business in recent weeks, there was a deafening sense of pessimism in the country around the planned dialogue, with many predicting that the dialogue would come to no meaningful conclusion. Many opined that if the dialogue happened, President Museveni and the government would use it to serve their political ends instead of serving the national interest.
Because of the cynicism that is now widespread within the country, most Opposition groups distanced themselves from the planned dialogue, saying that no good would come out of it and that they were better advised not to waste their time on the process. Some castigated the religious leaders and elders who are rooting for the dialogue, accusing them of working for the government.
But if one paused to ask any of the people who badmouthed the planned dialogue whether they had a problem dialoguing on vital national issues, the likely answer will be that most Ugandans, politicians and nonpoliticians alike, will think that a genuine national dialogue is vitally important to help the country move back from the precipice by evening out the politics and forging a more prosperous and inclusive economic future for Ugandans.
As things stand, those in government feel too powerful to dialogue with those who oppose them, yet those in Opposition feel that the people holding political power have grabbed it by force and have to be forced out of it.
If you listen carefully, you will pick many noises of Ugandans who feel that they have had a raw deal in ‘project Uganda’ and they want relations among its various peoples renegotiated.
On the economic front, recently released poverty figures show a slight percentage increase in the number of Ugandans living in absolute poverty, many Ugandans still cannot find paying employment, and the economy is not expanding fast enough to offer the fast-increasing population enough opportunities to compete in the new age.
These are matters that Ugandans need to dialogue about; and this need has been around for a long time now. Many argue, for instance, that the minimum consensus of 1995 has broken down because the Constitution that was promulgated in that year has since so radically changed that it is unrecognisable.
Elections do not ordinarily address such questions. That is why we need a genuine national dialogue. The mechanics of who organises it can be discussed.