Museveni must avoid being duped by the Bobi Wine gravy train

On Monday, April 29, 2019, activities in Kampala suffered a hit from police enforcement activities related to the arrest, detention and charging of MP Robert Kyagulanyi Sentamu, aka Bobi Wine, in court. This playbook of systematic staging of political protests, police’s show of force has been in place for now more than 20 years to either intimidate or cow the Opposition into silence.

Some of these police operations run from classified accounts with little or no scrutiny or oversight from offices like that of the Auditor General. In fact, some of these accounts – a physical address are not even resident at police headquarters.

During the long tenure of former IGP Kale Kayihura, both the police general budget and classified budget grew at an astronomical rate. It was a shock that upon his dismissal in March 2018, police could barely pay for toothpicks. Food vendors just this week were up in arms over unpaid bills totalling Shs30 billion.
You would imagine how a force with a budget of more than Shs600 billion can fail to grow their own food, something their much smaller sister force, Uganda Prisons Service, does with a much smaller budget.

For convenience, these operations assert the muscular identity of the State, but over time, they are simply a symbol of pilfering and wastage of resources. Most of police’s legitimate work should focus on community policing rather than purely political work. Mr Kyagulanyi is neither an armed combatant nor is he engaged in the use of force to advance his political agenda.

A simple offence like incitement, which is nowhere near a capital offence, can be processed in a local magistrates’ court in Kasangati, the area where he ordinarily resides. The summons can be delivered by court process servers found in many courts in the country.

But as the aftermath of Gen Kayihura and his cronies revealed, a number of people became immensely wealthy out of the politics of the day and were nearly untouchable. Even after months of reorganisation, police have not truly recovered from years of ineptitude hidden by patronage.

It is known that government is wary of actually proceeding with any prosecution of the former IGP even after charging him in the General Court Martial because of the threat of spillage of sensitive government secrets and national security assets.
However, by acting in the same manner, from the same playbook, employing teargas, lighting up running battles with youth and creating “kavuyo,” it shows a more sinister stance.

It is important that the President is properly advised by the security chiefs of the adverse economic consequences of running out ancient military hardware on the streets. There is no fun in this. Young people, the bedrock of our country, are massively off putted by this. Tourists are left aghast wondering whether we are in turmoil, which is far from the truth. International investors develop cold feet.

As elections approach, government should actually brace itself for more sinister forms of resistance, which are being waged on computers and the Internet. Just the other day, a bogus notice by the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) requesting dropping of defilement charges against a one “Komakec Christopher” – name similar to one longstanding security operative jammed legal chatrooms.

A single WhatsApp chat room can accommodate 257 users, and a favourite past-time for those who have time to pass is to create multiple chatrooms, the founders often leave once the group start communicating on their way to open new groups.

Online, there is hardly any teargas yet the fiercest wars are waged here. People are recruited on wedge like issues. On the day of the so-called Bobi Wine march on the city, the Christians were discussing Pastor Bugingo’s billion shilling fight with his estranged wife over property.
Another trending story on Facebook was another rogue pastor who had served “JIK” bleaching detergent to his followers killing six of them!

Mr Ssemogerere is an Attorney-at-Law and
an Advocate. [email protected]

Mr Odoobo C. Bichachi’s column,
Public Editor’s Notepad, returns next week.