Museveni is a shameless politician and that should worry everyone

By Musaazi Namiti

The politician who will be President Museveni’s main challenger in next year’s election was a mere child aged four when Mr Museveni seized power in 1986 after a five-year guerrilla campaign. If Robert Kyagulanyi Ssentamu, aka Bobi Wine, wins the election—which is impossible, given how shamelessly rigged the electoral process is—he has every reason to be proud of his accomplishment. He will be everyone’s hero. He will have overcome near-insurmountable obstacles to become Uganda’s next president.

By contrast, it is hard to see (as I will explain later) what will make Mr Museveni—who nearly everyone knows will be re-elected—proud when he continues in the job he has held for 34 years. Decent people take pride in their achievements because they have worked tirelessly, openly, honestly and transparently to attain success.
There are Ugandans, for example, who are famous because they won us gold medals in global competitions where everything was out in the open for all to see—and there were no favours, no rigging, no doping. Those Ugandans are proud owners of their trophies and have made us proud.
There are also Ugandans who are well educated not because they won State House scholarships by virtue of someone they know in Mr Museveni’s government, but because they did apply for scholarships and were competitively selected and went on to pursue advanced degrees and came back home to work for their country. Those people have to be proud of their accomplishments.
There are Ugandans with modest homes (and other properties) that do not bear comparison with the palatial homes of Ugandans who are beneficiaries of the rampant and rampaging corruption in Mr Museveni’s government, and those Ugandans made an honest livelihood and acquired their homes. They have every reason to be proud of what they have, although it may seem like nothing by the standards of those who have risen to affluence corruptly.
Mr Museveni is seeking re-election and will be declared winner of next year’s election by his own Electoral Commission. It is surprising that he does not find this surprising. He pretends there is nothing wrong with contesting elections that are managed by an electoral body that owes allegiance to him.
As many Ugandans know, the judge heading the Electoral Commission helped assemble bogus charges (rape, treason and misprision of treason) against presidential candidate Kizza Besigye in 2006, then Mr Museveni’s most formidable political opponent.
The voters’ register is a mess, as many videos circulating on social media seem to suggest. Calls by Opposition politicians to have proper electoral reforms were ignored. In its current form, the Presidential Elections Act favours the president and makes it hard for candidates who have lost the election and have real evidence of irregularities to have proper legal redress.
Mr Museveni continues to appoint judges he knows will do his bidding and passes over judges Ugandans and the Judicial Service Commission know are competent and fiercely independent. In April 2016, Daily Monitor, quoting a Judicial Service Commission member, reported that names of two judges were deleted from a list that was to be considered for promotion.
Mr Museveni’s main challenger cannot use radio stations to speak to voters. Security forces, who owe allegiance to Mr Museveni, just like the Electoral Commission, have killed his supporters. His concerts were banned. He cannot win the election.
But if you win an election where you are basically competing with yourself and still call yourself a winner, you must be downright shameless. Mr Museveni is. Sadly, he does not care.