The song of Oulanyah, and lament of Kadaga

I love Ugandan Twitter. It has a tongue-in-cheek and snarkiness bested only a few like what Americans call Black Twitter.
After the ruling National Resistance Movement’s (NRM) Central Executive Committee voted to back MP for Omoro County Jacob Oulanyah and deputy Speaker, for the Speakership over incumbent, Kamuli District Woman MP Rebecca Kadaga, a little hell broke loose. The two had sparred hotly, and when the CEC decision was made, Kadaga and her supporters cried betrayal, saying she had been thrown under the bus.

Arguing the decision had been irregular, Kadaga stormed off and announced she would stand for the job as an independent. On Monday, the election was held, and mid-way into the counting, it was all over but the shouting. Oulanyah had run away with it. Kadaga had come at the king and missed.
It was a result that was widely expected – and mocked.  On Twitter, Patrick Mukasa @pmukasaofficial noted with masterful snideness that: “Replacing Kadaga with Oulanyah for Speaker is like shifting your patient from Mulago to Kiruddu.”
Kanyomozi District @PatriqKanyomozi, who equally thought little of the two leading contenders, wrote;
“If I had to choose one of the two; Hon Kadaga and Hon Oulanyah, I would choose Hon Ssemujju.”

Former journalist Ssemujju Nganda and opposition Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) MP for Kira Municipality, placed third with 15 votes. Oulanyah got 310, and Kadaga 197. The peculiarities of the NRM’s long rule, and her decision to stand up to her party’s central committee, meant that Kadaga became the first incumbent Speaker in Uganda’s history to lose a re-election vote. And, suggesting that she might become too disgruntled with her party and cross over to Bobi Wine’s opposition National Unity Party, Wesley...not snipes @Wesley_1105 remarked as the votes were being counted; “Kadaga about to change into a red dress...” Oulanyah has recently outdone himself in demonstrating his loyalty to Museveni, and while Kadaga’s 10 years as Speaker saw her playing along with ridiculous constitutional amendments, including the removal of the age limit to allow Museveni stand and rule into his 40th year, there is still a lot of room down for Parliament to sink.
The point Mukasa and Kanyomozi were making in their Twitter backhands, is that Oulanyah is the perfect man to take Parliament down that sewer.  They are partly correct.

 However, whatever his failings, Oulanyah at most is only the instrument. Even if, indeed, Kadaga had held on to the job, Parliament’s downward spiral can’t be reversed.  The reason for it has more to do with what happens to a regime that has been in power as long as the NRM – over 35 years now – and failed to go through a renewal. It only decays. 

 This is a process that has been happening more broadly. For the Parliament Speakership, compare it under the leadership of the late James Wapakhabulo, to that of either his immediate predecessor Edward Ssekandi, and more recently Kadaga. The decline in quality has been precipitous.
Consider the substantive Chief Justices, from Samuel Wako Wambuzi (1986-2001), Benjamin Odoki (2001-2013), Bart Katureebe (2015 – 2020), to Alfonse Owiny-Dollo today. The judgement in the 2001 Kizza Besigye presidential election petition, in which three judges held that it had been rigged, and eventual decision was that, basically that “yes, votes were stolen, but not enough to change the final result” was almost revolutionary. 

Look at Parliament, at a time when MPs like Winnie Byanyima (NRM) and Nobert Mao (Opposition) were censuring ministers, and today. 
Even the intelligence services. They might not have been angels, but when Jim Muhwezi led the Internal Security Organisation (ISO) and Amama Mbabazi the External Security Organisation (ESO) these were serious organisations that played on the African and even global espionage stages. Today they are shadows of themselves.

Then take the ministry of Finance under Crispus Kiyonga,  Jehoash Mayanja Nkangi, Gerald Ssendaula, Ezra Suruma, Syda Bbumba, Maria Kiwanuka – and now Matika Kasaija? In the early NRM years, someone like the very able Kafumbe Mukasa, who could only make minister of State for Finance, would be too good to be minister if he were alive. The decay we have been witnessing is, you might say, a dialectical necessity.

 It doesn’t need Kadaga to exchange her yellow dress for a red one. It is the grand invisible hand of history doing its thing. It leads to regime crisis, decline, and possibly collapse, and the emergence of a new vibrant political order from the ashes – much like the NRM and Museveni themselves were born out of the crises of the 1970s and 1980s.  Looked at from this point of view, the worst thing would have been for Nganda to win. For, then, there might have been a false sense of renewal, and a rehabilitation of the political order.

Mr Onyango-Obbo is a journalist, writer and curator of the “Wall of Great Africans”. Twitter@cobbo3