Obote, the elephant in the room, shifts uneasily as Binaisa is shown the door

Although the Tanzanians had prevented Dr Milton Obote from attending the Moshi Conference, the former leader cast long shadows from his exile in Dar es Salaam.

The two successive puppet regimes of Yusuf Kironde Lule and Godfrey Binaisa had failed to build genuine grassroots support or set up a military that could guarantee their survival in a very fluid political situation.
Obote was not in Uganda and was seen as a divisive figure but the politics of accommodation that gave rise to Lule and Binaisa had clearly failed by the time the latter was thrown out in May 1980.

Uganda had clearly not stirred from the Idi Amin hangover of strong man rule and if any political transition was to take place, it required the accumulation of sufficient power to force through the necessary reforms.
The problem, as Prof. A.B. Kasozi notes in his book, ‘The Origins of Social Violence in Uganda’, was that those who had the political power in the National Consultative Council did not have the military might to enforce it.

Power of the gun
Thus although the NCC had passed a resolution to hold elections in December 1980 under the UNLF as an umbrella organisation, “they did not control the means of violence and could not, with words alone, enforce their decisions”.

Real power lay with those who carried guns, especially the pro-Obote allies in Kikoosi Maluum. As early as 1979, pro-Obote forces had undertaken secret recruitments into what were, in effect, private militia in Apac, Kitgum, Lira, Kumi and Soroti.

The militias had then been behind a wave of insecurity across the country designed to undermine the Binaisa government. Museveni and other NCC players tried to regularise the recruitments but did not have a military counterweight with sufficient numbers to offer a threat of deterrence. Museveni was himself accused of recruiting members of his ethnic group into the army and although an official investigation found no proof to support the claim, the allegations said a lot about the nature of the free-for-all power grab that was taking place.

Binaisa, as President, could have played one faction against the other and held them in check but his ill-fated decision to transfer Museveni from the Defence ministry and to fire Oyite-Ojok from the army instead united his foes and ended the rodeo ride of his presidency.

Thus on May 12, 1980 the Military Commission led by Paulo Muwanga (and whose other members included Museveni, Oyite-Ojok, Tito Okello, Zed Maruru and then-Capt. William Omaria) announced that it was taking over presidential power.

“The assumption of power,” Muwanga added in a later radio broadcast, “shall not be questioned in any court of law.” Power had not only resorted to those who had access to organised violence but the power actors within the state had carried out a coup against the state, the president, and the wider interests represented in the UNLF.

Military Commission in-charge
“It therefore came to pass that the Military Commission, an arm of an organisation, took over the responsibilities of the main body, the UNLF,” noted Prof. Kasozi. “The branch had usurped the duties of the trunk.”

Although a Presidential Commission, consisting of Yoweri Hunter Wacha-Olwol, Justice Polycarp Nyamuchoncho and Justice Saulo Musoke, was appointed, it had no power whatsoever; real power remained vested in the barrel of the gun and the gun was in the hands of the Military Commission.
Thus although the Presidential Commission held executive power on paper, in reality the power was with the Military Commission. This is why most people who have heard of Paulo Muwanga might never have heard of any of the members of the three-man Presidential Commission.

The earlier plans to hold elections under the aegis of the UNLF as an umbrella body were quickly set aside in favour of holding multi-party elections. The real reason for the policy shift was in Tanzania, where Milton Obote was waiting impatiently to return to Uganda and resurrect his own fortunes and those of the Uganda Peoples Congress.

To hold the elections under the UNLF, in which he had allies but no position, would have airbrushed Milton Obote out of Uganda’s immediate future political configuration.

Instead the coup by the Military Commission and the announcement, made soon after by Muwanga, that political parties would contest the elections, now put Obote firmly back into the saddle.

“The Military Commission took power in order to give it to Obote in a manner that would be perceived by the international community as democratic and, therefore, legal,” argues Prof. Kasozi.

“Obote wanted to maintain his image as a civilian ruler who could assume power only through legal means – through the ballot, not the bullet.”
Soon after the Military Commission took power, Obote announced plans to return to Uganda. The former president had already started pronouncing himself on events that were taking place in Uganda.

Obote’s influence
“By March 1980 Obote was rightly saying that Uganda was leaderless,” Prof. Kasozi wrote. “He pointed out that his forces were already in the country grouped around his party and that he wanted to be the last person in his team to go back to Uganda.”

Thus as Binaisa departed, Uganda had changed government three times in a little over a year, a former leader was pulling strings from a neighbouring country which was in charge of holding Uganda’s fragile peace together and which seemed disinterested in addressing the violence and instability that was growing by the day.

It was in this environment that the country announced plans to hold elections later in the year. It was also the environment in which Obote announced his impending return to the country.

Uganda had moved one step forward in deposing Idi Amin but the other foot was still covered in the reminders of war, violence and political opportunism.

Continues tomorrow.