Why we must change course

Our political system is totally broken. In the past two weeks, I have tried to outline the rationale for why Uganda needs to renegotiate a stable and durable social order to guarantee a peaceful and prosperous country for the near future. I laid out why this is critical and urgent. I also showed how we can do it.

Now I want to circle back and explain why we need to turn around things. What is it that has gone wrong? Many perceptive and conscientious Ugandans know for sure that we are a perilous state. In fact, even the average Ugandan peasant-compatriot, up in my ancestral village in Bubulo, knows quite well that our politics are precarious and our basic social fabric has been ripped apart.

Our politics today show the extent of disarray and dysfunction we are in. The rulers see their otherwise legitimate opponents as enemies.

If you are an opposition actor, who can credibly threaten those in power; if you are Kizza Besigye, Bobi Wine, Erias Lukwago, you are adjudged as engaged in criminal conduct and must be met with the full force of the state. The converse is that these eminent opposition leaders and their parties construe the incumbent as illegitimate and not worth of recognition and respect.

Between the two sides to the contest for state power, there is scarcely any mutual ground, not even on fundamental questions like national security and citizens’ wellbeing. Nothing.

At the level of foot soldiers, matters are not any different, in fact perhaps worse especially when you consider that the entry of Bobi Wine into the political fray created a discomfiture not just for the ruling establishment but the opposition too.

Supporters of Bobi Wine distaste Museveni and his rule, but some of them appear to reserve their most extreme dislike for Besigye! The same is true of the latter’s followers and their attitude to Bobi Wine. Why this is the case is as puzzling as why Museveni and the system he presides over treats citizens as enemies.

The bottom-line is that our politics is a very bad state. State institutions and alternative centres of power have been curtailed, in some cases totally destroyed at the behest of Mr Museveni’s quest to rule for life.

Today, the leadership of Parliament, the Speaker and his Deputy, was installed by Mr Museveni. The two lack the spine and strength to stand up against Museveni in defence of the public interest that contradicts the personal desires of the President. They serve at the whims of the chief who installed them.

The Judiciary is not any better. The military can blatantly ignore a court order and the Chief Justice cannot even utter a word in protest. The rule of guns has become brazen. Excesses of state operatives and the coercive arsenal of the state have shot through the roof, thus the runaway human rights violations that are now intimately associated with the current regime of rule.

All this would have been less of a problem if Uganda did not face even bigger socioeconomic problems over and over the political ditch we have fallen into. There is need to fix politics so we can focus on tackling our endemic social problems and deal with the enormous economic difficulties we face.

Without putting the political house in order, it is difficult to have sufficient attention and long term focus on bringing about transformation.

The current political system suffers from a variety of ills and deficiencies, but arguably the most important is how the country will negotiate the end to Mr Museveni’s long rule and the best way to forge a new political consensus for a better future.

Predictably, the incumbent and a coterie of his followers including senior government officials dismiss this a non-issue! They point to the Constitution, routine elections and the theatrics that go on in parliament in the name of the people’s representative.

But we no longer have a constitution to speak of. Elections are now a total sham. And beyond being a source of a succulent monthly salaries and emoluments for more than 500 odd men and women who scatter some of their parliamentary largesse to desperate constituents, there is not much to be said about parliament as a branch of government.

Local governments are at best havens of localised theft of public funds and wanton financial malfeasance.

There is no other way to move Uganda forward without totally dismantling the current system and structure of politics. There is a real need for a call to arms, of course not to guns or any form of violent tools, but a call to citizens to demand for turning matters around and bury the current system for a better Uganda. We are doomed if we carry on with the current modus operandi.

[email protected]