Museveni denounced election thuggery?

President Museveni and his (former?) mouth hatchet man, Tamale Mirundi, have always known that overstaying in power tends to make rulers more corrupt, but both men have spent the latter part of NRM rule fiercely arguing that Uganda’s case is different.

Both men also used to compose unflattering descriptions of Uganda’s former rulers, their parties, and even their kinsfolk. If you missed Museveni referring to former rulers as primitive dictators, or even swine, you would get Mirundi mocking Milton Obote’s (UPC) party men who were milling around Uganda House, with their kinswomen hawking straw brooms on Kampala Road.

The contempt was understandable, considering how thoroughly Museveni’s NRA/NRM rebels defeated the then dominant generality called northern power, which had been expressed in the UPC party, the persons of Obote, Idi Amin and Tito Okello, their armies and their inner circles.

Obote, who had been overthrown by Amin in 1971, returned to power in 1980 arrogantly vowing to start where he had stopped in 1971. 

Indeed, he returned amidst so much barbarism that many citizens sided with the rebels. It is this pact with the people that Museveni’s long rule has gradually undermined by cynically replaying most of the vices perpetrated by his predecessors.

In particular, the theft of public resources is broader and deeper than at any time before him.
However, the rigging of the 1980 election was the cardinal excuse Museveni fronted for starting a rebellion that overthrew Obote’s UPC government. 

Even in a country where shame has been virtually abolished, it probably secretly disturbs Museveni that he has never won an election (in 37 years of power) that was regarded honest or fair. And it is in northern Uganda, especially in the late Obote’s Lango, where Museveni’s NRM would be most despised for ‘winning’ rigged elections.

The mellowing of Museveni’s attitude towards UPC, its living party leaders and the general north is partly remorse and partly because he has lost support in much of central and eastern Uganda for the other vices; corruption, growing authoritarianism, human rights abuses, generalised institutional dysfunction and gross inequality.

Election rigging by NRM has, therefore, reconciled Museveni with UPC. Similar feathers, mutual sinners.
The Oyam North parliamentary by-election in Lango 10 days ago was scheduled to take place about a week after the Bukedea LC5 by-election.

Virtually all the by-elections before Bukedea have been rotten, very rotten. But Museveni singled out Bukedea for criticism of his barbaric politico-electoral machine, even as he congratulated the declared NRM ‘victor’. Why?

Some have speculated that Museveni was trimming to size politicians like Parliament Speaker Anita Among, who were opportunistically claiming credit for engineering the ‘victory’.

Without dismissing other explanations, it is possible Museveni fears that his threadbare legacy will be for shredding if Obote’s election crimes were multiplied with total impunity in Lango itself under NRM rule.

Other reasons notwithstanding, Museveni’s criticism of the Bukedea thuggery sent a signal to the NRM/State/electoral machine not to force too hard for an NRM ‘victory’ in Oyam North; a signal that a UPC victory would be acceptable.

But thieves will be thieves. The NRM machine and ‘Byabakamaesque’ electoral mathematics could be depended on to engineer a result reflecting UPC and NRM as equals, with UPC only a toe ahead; a difference of a few hundred votes. It has been an intriguing journey from the days of the pigs.
And come to think of it; the women Mirundi spied hawking straw brooms on Kampala Road may be ready to buy into his new pet theme of a hereditary republic.

Alan Tacca is a novelist, socio-political commentator.
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