When Covid-19 is a handy stick  with which to cane opponents

The general election campaign season in Uganda is incapable of coming and going without big drama.

If only people did not have to die in the process.
The killings, so predictable every campaign season, are as though we are fulfilling a ritual without which the gods and the ancestors would curse us. 

Or maybe they already cursed us, given the political turmoil since independence, and they keep taking lives until some day they lift the curse once satisfied with human blood.
This past week has been particularly bloody. 

Dozens of people were killed following the arrest of presidential challenger Robert Kyagulanyi, aka Bobi Wine. As with many such killings at the hand of security operatives mandated to protect our lives and property, the exact number of the dead will likely not be known.

Mr Kyagulanyi was forcibly arrested in Luuka District reportedly because he disregarded guidelines established by the government — no drawing crowds during campaigns — to stem the spread of Covid-19.

Covid-19, however, is just the latest easy excuse to persecute potent opponents of President Museveni and his NRM party.

There were no Covid-19 SOPs in 2001, 2006, 2011 and 2016. Yet every serious challenger for the presidency, that being Dr Kizza Besigye in all those rounds, faced it extremely rough. Denial of access to media even after paying for airtime. Denials of access to campaign venues. Brutal arrests. Detentions. Home confinement. Sham court trials for rape or terrorism or whatever.

Now Covid-19 is being hijacked to make life very hard for Mr Museveni’s more dogged opponent. Political rights are being tossed overboard, thanks to fighting Covid-19.

 May be there is now some logic as to why, beside the fear of having to step aside, the President outright rejected the idea of declaring a state of emergency and postponing the election. The Covid-19 situation was going to be harnessed for political advantage.

Now Mr Museveni is blaming foreigners for encouraging street demonstrations (or maybe riots). The way he presents this divorces the anger on the streets from his government’s action of self-servingly arresting Mr Kyagulanyi and of not providing enough jobs over the decades for the burgeoning numbers of young people.

No matter. It is those mysterious foreigners. Even when Mr Museveni names them, there are no specifics. This week he spoke of homosexuals. They are such an easy punching bag, these homosexuals of foreign lands. But is there a president in Uganda who never blamed the wicked foreigners when feeling domestic political heat? The script has not changed since 1962.

Having said all this, let’s change tack a little. Has the idea taken hold over the years within the Opposition that the best way to challenge Mr Museveni is through some form of militancy?

After all, Mr Museveni is said to understand only the language of the gun, of fighting. So, if you can’t chase him from power through the same military means he came, then deploy something close: maximum belligerence or defiance.

Indeed, President Museveni never disappoints on this front. Commenting on the rioters and their backers, he said: “They have entered an area we know well: of fighting … Whoever started it will regret.”

And so the muscular politics of Uganda, ever on display during electioneering time, continues its forward march.

Okay, but it is an outrage that any Ugandan has to die because of an electoral contest. When does the carnage end?

Mr Tabaire is a media trainer and commentator on public affairs based in Kampala. [email protected]
Twitter:@btabaire