Besigye: EC connived with Museveni to rob me of win

He aimed to become Uganda’s President and went out in 2001, 2006 and again this year to ask for the necessary votes to get to State House. Like the previous ones, Dr Kizza Besigye, the Forum for Democratic Change leader, contends the February 18 vote he had anticipated to win with 60 per cent, was rigged. Our Senior Reporter, Tabu Butagira, asked the retired Colonel what went wrong, his future plans and if going to the bush is an option to right the alleged electoral wrongs:

Qn: Two weeks to the vote, you told this newspaper you could win the February 18 ballot with 60 per cent. The Electoral Commission (EC) announced President Museveni won the presidential vote with 68 per cent and that you got 26 per cent. What happened?
A: What happened was that there was no election. If there was an election we would, I believe, get what we expected. Once the EC and their masters decided that there would be no election, what we were talking about could no longer be an issue.

People voted and how can it be that there was no election?
Yes, people went out to vote, but an election means that their vote counts. It’s not about people walking to the polling stations.
The registers which were at the polling stations were different from those we had (as political parties). Many people were disenfranchised as a result. The EC decided that whoever comes to the polling station votes whether you are identified or not. So there was a lot of multiple voting, our polling agents were arrested and removed from polling stations in many areas and there was a lot of ballot stuffing. Many of our agents were denied the results declaration forms even where an election went on in an orderly way and results were announced.
Different results were recorded from the results that were announced. All these were outside our control, whatever capacity we had, because of the involvement of the military and security forces interfering with the elections.
There were the indirect influences which had a huge impact – the obscene amounts of money which were splashed throughout the campaign process, including on the voting day. The terror, you know, with the military everywhere, fighter aircrafts and helicopters hovering over people’s heads with the threats that you either vote for President Museveni or there is war.
If people were allowed to vote by secret ballot, to have their votes counted and recorded accurately, we would still have won in spite of all those influences.

Where is the evidence that your victory was stolen?
We pointed out some of the ballot papers pre-ticked in favour of President Museveni that were seized. (Laughs) I understand the EC was saying I should be investigated for having them until they were all over the town (laughs heartily) in the suspended Kampala mayoral vote.
These are ballot papers printed by the EC. Any decent commissioner should have done the decent thing and resigned because this is complete breach of trust that anybody can imagine. There was definitely ballot stuffing and also concrete evidence that they arrested many of our agents. Some of them are still in prison. This is an election observers always thin on the ground concluded was not free and fair.
If you don’t have a free and fair election, you cannot talk about a result or winner. Even constitutionally, there is only one election that is allowed to produce a President of Uganda –a free and fair election.

There is the argument that whereas you contend the elections were not free or fair, there are areas where opposition parliamentary candidates won. How do you explain that?
Two things happened. There are areas the election riggers targeted. And in those areas, no amount of support or vigilance could deliver victory. When you get the winner’s results, they read a different one as happened in many areas. Our Woman Member of Parliament candidate for Tororo (Ms Keziah Nyakecho Ochwo) has all her results on the declaration form.
They have announced a different person as the winner and they are saying she should go to court. And we have many such people, who have all their results, and they have won, but somebody else has been declared a winner.
But there are other areas where they don’t put as much focus. And there if our people are vigilant enough, they can overwhelm the rigging and they can be announced as winners.

Let’s take the case of Budadiri West MP Nandala Mafabi. His constituency came under siege by the military in armoured vehicles on Election Day; people were beaten and there was bloodletting, RDCs trooped in to butress Presidency minister Beatrice Wabudeya. But still MP Mafabi won.
Nandala Mafabi is, I think, one of the extra-ordinary examples because his election wasn’t just about himself. It was also about the dignity of the people of Bugisu.
The struggle in Bugisu has been beyond this election because President Museveni has been trying to decimate the only institution that the Bagisu identify with – the Bugisu Cooperative Union – which Mafabi happens to head. You heard during the campaigns, he (Museveni) directed that Nandala Mafabi should be removed from the union illegally (laughs) and that was reversed (by the courts). So there was a war-like situation in Sironko and I think the government realised that it could escalate beyond what they could handle and they eased off.

Do you think there is reason to prosecute EC chairman Eng. Badru Kiggundu or any of his team members?
I think really Kiggundu and his commissioners have been criminal in their actions because they have been doing things that they knew, that they were warned, were bound to create chaos in the country.
They obviously fundamentally breached the trust the institution is to enjoy from the people of Uganda by the fundamental failures they have been engaged in. I hope at some stage they will be made to account for their grave mistakes.

But you got fewer votes this year than in the 2006 ballot. What honest mistakes can you own up to in the campaigns for the poor show?
That question is wrongly premised. I could even have been given zero votes. For instance, at a polling station they announced 200 votes for me, Eng. Kiggundu announced that I got four votes. For any election that is not free and fair, you cannot begin to talk of number of votes or why someone failed. There were no 5.4 million votes for Museveni – it is just fake. There is no way Museveni would get such votes.
In fact you should ask the question: What miracle Museveni did to increase his fortunes (votes) by almost 10 per cent point when patients at Mulago Hospital are striking because they cannot receive treatment at a national referral hospital - I am a doctor but I have not seen anywhere patients striking because they are not being given medicines - when there is no power, roads are impassable and education has collapsed?

UPC leader Olara Otunnu called for boycott of the elections whose results you now dispute so as to bring pressure on President Museveni to appoint a more representative EC and you disagreed. With the benefit of hindsight, do you think that was the right thing to do?
No. no. no! I think a boycott by itself is not a useful decision on the part of political actors. Firstly, all dictatorships will have proxies which they will use as some kind of opposition (laughs). We have (38) registered political parties which are in people’s pockets. They can pull those out and put up a façade.
Our people needed to know that they are participating in a flawed election and to try to be vigilant in trying to defend it – and failure of which, as it has happened, would then cause them to know and act about such a ridiculous thing. That’s why we said we would not go to court because we knew we were participating in a fraudulent process.
We knew there were some things which could happen which would be beyond our control and so even in a fraudulent election, it is necessary to move with the people until people themselves are able to act.
Because beyond elections, the only other avenue that is a constitutional option against electoral fraud is for the population to protest.

You called for protests without saying when they begin and how this will be executed. How was your call supposed to be effected yet the voters are already back in the garden or at work and willing to move on?
Well, even on Election Day, people were working. This isn’t a matter for Kizza Besigye as a (former) candidate, it is not a matter for FDC as a party, it is not even a matter for IPC as a group of parties. It can only be a matter for the people of Uganda who are sovereign - who have all the power. We don’t have power as political parties. Power resides in the people. In the campaigns, we were vehicles to deliver their aspirations in the elections.
So, if we meet obstacles on the roads, we only have to tell the people that your vehicles cannot reach where you were going; there are these problems and in which case everybody then has a responsibility to re-direct the country back to the path of constitutional rule if the Constitution is subverted.
And that is the duty we are informing the people of Uganda about. That the time is now to take up your duty and re-direct the affairs of Uganda to constitutional rule.
The people have a choice to live as free citizens whose voices matter in determining how they are governed and who governs them or to live, as Museveni clearly wants them to do, in fear and subjugation by the guns Museveni happens to hold today.
If they are willing to make it today, well and good. If they want to make in 10 years, it is up to them. It is not a matter we want to carry on ourselves as former candidates or as political parties.
We have a duty to give the information as we have done. If our leadership is needed in that process for protest, we will avail our leadership but the people themselves must rise and protest by themselves.

President Museveni was quoted in the media as telling his supporters at Kololo during the NRM victory celebrations that he will crush peaceful demonstrators and grab you “like a samosa and devour you like cake”. Are you ready to be swallowed?
President Museveni is deliberately trying to deflect the attention of Ugandans from the real issues. Besigye isn’t an issue at all. Besigye would be dead today whether eaten by him – that’s if he has chosen to be a cannibal (laughs heartily) –it doesn’t matter.
The reason people would protest is because they have no jobs, they have no health care, no good roads and their children cannot get decent education. All these are not there because the government is stealing their money – that’s what he has to confront and deal with whether Besigye is dead or not.
He has superintended over a government that has robbed from its citizens unprecedented amounts of money and if the citizens become annoyed, he can kill many of them obviously, as we have seen. He has the capacity to order his soldiers to gun down the people who buy for them the guns.
In the end, whatever he does, however many weapons he has, he will have to face the truth that this is a country that belongs to Ugandans - and not to himself, and certainly not to his guards.

Your party recently raised a red flag over your safety. How serious is this threat.
The threat is there. And if there was anyone not aware, President Museveni expounded on it (during his address to supporters at Kololo airstrip) on Friday. People came to kill me (while in exile) in South Africa and it was the government of South Africa that protected me.

So are you considering running into exile again?
No, I will not.

When President Museveni alleged the 1980 elections were rigged, he went to the bush.

Why isn’t pushing out the President by force of arms not an option for you since you say the opposition seems to have run out of contistutional options to remove him?
I have not ruled out that as an option. I have never ruled out the use of arms to remove a dictatorship. But war is not something you walk into casually. War is extremely a destructive process and shouldn’t be entered into lightly. It should be the extreme option.
The reason we are saying we should not go to war now is because we think there are still other avenues to bring the country back on the path of constitutional rule. One of the options is peaceful demonstrations.

Most peaceful demonstrations succeeding in North Africa are with the tacit approval of the army. The so-called mass revolutions are sort of subtle coups. Critics say the UPDF is like Museveni’s personal army and won’t allow such civil disturbance.
All those armies (in the affected countries) were also under the firm control of their presidents. At the end of the day, what the dictators forget is that those guns are in the hands of people whose brothers and sisters they are being asked to murder. They are not mercenaries.
The people in the UPDF are our brothers and sisters. They live with us and they know that our grievances are genuine. It’s not that they are falling from planet Mars. So there is an extent to which they can be used to murder their citizens and that’s why they rebel against the dictators at some stage.

Are you suggesting a coup is a possibility in Uganda?
I don’t know if a coup is possible because dictators focus more on the military, making that possibility difficult. A dictator who has been in power for 25 years will know that and the means of conducting that coup are grossly undermined.
I also don’t think a coup would be a solution. It could possibly mean a temporary respite from one dictator to another. The change we are advocating is where the military is totally subordinate to civilian authority, not the the other way round.

Talking of alleged UPDF’s excesses, if people came to the streets and were gunned down, don’t you think you would be accused of having blood on your hands by leading defenceless people in harm’s way?
That is why I have told you it is not me leading anybody onto the streets. It is me informing the people of Uganda that they have a duty to protest. Peaceful protest is completely legal and constitutional. If anybody kills innocent, legally-protesting people, the responsibility cannot be on my hands, the murderer must answer for his crimes.

On February 24, US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Ambassador Johnnie Carson told the BBC’s The World Today programme you should go to court to address your grievances and not the street. He also said President Museveni should not bully protestors because peaceful demonstrations are a “democratic, fundamental right”. What do you read of the contradicting statements?
The US is known to make common blunders in areas where it is pursuing short-term goals. Clearly the US has some short-term goals in working with Museveni and this is the US government, not the people of the United States. And I think the government does that in betrayal of its own people because the people of the US have got a very, very clear solid view about people’s freedom everywhere in the world. But their governments, as you have seen working with all the dictators in the world for short-term gains. They worked with (late Zairean President) Mobutu Sese Seko when he was superintending over a government similar to the current one of Uganda; stealing from its population, killing and maiming its people.
I seem to see the US government making a similar mistake in Uganda.

What next for you?
I will remain around as an activist. I am not going to seek another term to lead the FDC. The party has huge reserve of potential national leaders. I do not need any office as a political activist.

Security Minister Amama Mbabazi, whom you accused during the campaigns of sabotaging the 1981-6 NRA bush war, said last week that you are a bad loser who should retire from politics. What is your comment?
At least he didn’t respond to whether he sabotaged the struggle, but he was indeed subversive to our struggle. The person who complained about him most in the bush was not me but Museveni himself. That is why Mbabazi is now hostage to Museveni’s dictatorship because he knows that he is not serving as of right but as of privilege. He did nothing to warrant the positions he is holding in government.

What do you say to your two million supporters countrywide?
That they must remain firm. I was only an embodiment for change. They must renew their resolve. The time is now and they should stand up and make sure that the country is free and their will counts.

Your last word?
It is to the dictatorship and its cronies that they need to climb down from the cloud 9 where they live in opulence and detachment from the suffering of the people.