
Milton Obote during his swearing-in ceremony at Parliament in 1980. PHOTO/FILE.
Forty four years ago last December, the government of the United States of America endorsed the newly elected government of Apollo Milton Obote.
A copy of a telegram that was sent from the Embassy of US embassy to Washington on December 23, 1980, by Ambassador Gordon Robert Beyer, following a meeting with Obote, and a few government officials including Prof Ephraim Kamuntu and Minister Chris Rwakasisi, indicates that many people in the United States government were of the view that the Uganda Peoples Congress (UPC) was best suited to lead Uganda at the time.
READ: The Obote I knew
Gordon Robert Beyer, a career Foreign Service Officer, served as the US Ambassador to Uganda from May 23, 1980 to May 31, 1983.
“(I) continued that I would be less than frank, however, if I did not now tell him that many of those most knowledgeable about African affairs in the US believed that an Obote government would be the strongest government in Uganda and, therefore, have the best chance of leading Ugandans to a better life,” Mr Beyer wrote in the telegram which was published by the Office of the Historian.
The telegram was published in Volume 17, part 2 of a dossier that covers the US’s relations with countries in Sub-Saharan Africa for the period between 1977 and 1980.
According to the telegram, the meeting which lasted 20 minutes, took place at the office of the president on December 23, 1980.
Obote was sworn in as president on December 15, 1980, after his UPC was declared winner of the much disputed 1980 elections with 69 parliamentary seats in the 126-seat parliament. Dr Paul Kawanga Ssemogerere’s Democratic Party (DP) which won 55 parliamentary seats stayed away from the swearing-in ceremony, which was held at the parliamentary buildings.
US neutrality
According to the telegram, the US government under President Jimmy Carter had made it a point to remain neutral during the duration of the campaigns, a stand that President Obote appreciated.
“I reminded Obote that we had tried to stay neutral during elections between the several parties; Obote said yes you did and you were successful,” the telegram read in part.
President Jimmy Carter, a Democrat who served a single term from 1977 to 1981 before losing a re-election bid to Ronald Reagan was demised on December 29 last year at the age of 100. He was the 39th President of the US.
Obote defends Muwanga
It has now emerged that Obote defended the Paul Muwanga-led Military Commission and its handling of matters around the election, saying that some of the criticism levelled against it in the foreign media had been unfair.
Obote is said to have conceded that Muwanga had overreacted when he issued an edict taking from the Electoral Commission (EC) the authority to report vote tallies, but hasted to tell the Ambassador that the move had been precipitated by EC’s incompetence in the management of elections in Kampala. Obote told the Ambassador that the level of incompetence bordered on subversion.
He also told the Ambassador that he had pointed it out to Muwanga that he had made a mistake, adding that though the edict was never rescinded, it was never enforced, which explained why Muwanga had publicly turned back to the EC the authority to collate and report returns.
Obote unhappy with the EC
The telegram however also revealed that Obote was also not happy with some of the decisions that had been taken by the EC.
One of his complaints was the elections body had unilaterally extended the voting period to December 11, 1980. He said that the EC did not have the legal authority to do so, adding that it was Muwanga’s edict that legalized the extension.
He also took exceptions to Mr Vincent Ssekono’s order to polling stations to only start counting votes after polls had closed on December 11, saying that it has not been received by all elections officials, which led to early counting and announcement of partial returns while elections were still in progress in some constituencies.
“Obote could not explain how DP could have announced the number of seats it claimed to have won around noon on December 11 before the polls had even closed officially. There were also several other discrepancies he could not explain but which he was looking into. For example, in the Masaka area, there were 80,000 more ballots delivered by Ssekono to the constituencies there than there were people officially registered,” read the telegram in part.
It adds that “UPC intended to look into cases where it felt its candidates had been badly treated and it would accept the decision of the courts whether it went for UPC or against UPC”.
Obote is appalled by finances
The telegram also revealed that Obote had not been prepared for how terrible the state of affairs in the country’s coffers were when he campaigned to return to power.
“He (Obote) wanted me to know, however, that he was somewhat appalled by the problems facing Uganda. He had spent a full day at the Ministry of Finance and things are in terrible shape,” read the telegram.
According to the telegram, Ambassador Robert Beyer offered to broker a meeting between the Minister for Planning and Economic Development, Sam Odaka, and the Director of Aid, one Buck, to see how the US could help with Uganda’s economy. It is not clear whether the said meeting took place.
It should be remembered that it was in part due to that sad state of affairs in the exchequer that Obote, working on the recommendations of both the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), announced on June 1, 1981, that the government was letting “the shilling float”.
Floating is a monetary policy where the government does not fix the exchange rate. The system is not backed up by gold or assets. That means that the foreign exchange rates tend to fluctuate due to supply and demand with global demand and level of foreign exchange reserves often playing a very big role.
The government was however subsequently forced to abandon the “floating policy” and introduced two different windows and rates at which foreign exchange could be accessed through the Bank of Uganda as a rapid rise in the cost of imports and domestic inflation began to bite. That effectively returned the power to determine the exchange rate into the hands of the government, but with it emerged a strong illegal trade in foreign exchange. The black market was popularly known as the Kibanda.
US offers to train civil service
It has also emerged that the civil service was also giving Obote lots of headaches on account of corruption and inefficiency.
“He (Obote) was also distressed by the civil service. There are many in the civil service, Obote continued, who are corrupt, but whom he will have to retain in government for a while. It will take time to train men to staff a reformed civil service,” the telegram further reads.
The document revealed that Ambassador Beyer then offered to have the civil service trained by the US in various areas either in Uganda or in the US.
It will take time to train men to staff a reformed civil service. I interrupted to offer U.S. assistance in training civil servants in various areas, either in Uganda or in the U.S. The training never materialised.