Prime
If you fear nakedness, then dress-up
Every electioneering in Uganda leaves cracks in our commitment in the preamble of the Constitution to being a better people.
We swore to deterge our blood dripping claws and cut the long nails that preyed on each other’s neck to quench bloodthirsty dracula we had become.
Unfortunately, majority of the young people below 35 years, cannot tell these stories with clear imaginations of how savage we were, but never mind, we have already given them what to talk about with their children and grandchildren by the fireplace following 35 years of (mis)rule.
An election in Uganda is no longer about how growing a democracy we are, but how vulnerable we are to democracy.
The unmatched violence blended with election rigging and malpractices, confirmed in the triplet tests in the Supreme Court against the integrity of our electoral process since 2001 to 2011, proves our retrogression on the promise.
It also emphasises how much people within and without must talk about our nakedness on the principles we decided to follow as a requisite through the pristine to civilised and democratic society.
We cannot brag as a country to be democratic with all the violence, senseless killings, abductions and illegal detentions aimed at intimidating and silencing dissent, which however “distractive” and “unconstructive” it may look in the eyes of the State, it remains fundamental to a free and fair democratic society.
The media and citizen journalists’ cameras on a campaign trail and a piece of paper and a pen are as good as opinions and factual reporting using social media, which are import for pluralism.
The above may rub the State the wrong way for exposing its nakedness like unruly officers aiming live bullets at civilians or beating presidential candidate John Katumba on his campaign trail that it would otherwise prefer to keep as secret as possible for its good reputation in the league of civilised societies.
The decision by Uganda Media Council asking for everyone covering elections to apply for accreditation is a gift-encase to deliver deprived free speech and other individual and public freedoms to the government.
If they succeeds on this, then we may never know who kicked who or who deflated whose car- tyre.
My unsolicited advice to government is to simply end the senseless killings, abductions and illegal detentions, it will be on the good side of the papers and news without folding its pain inflicting fists.
I doubt anyone will certainly carry a bad story to the foreigners that government selectively detests. Therefore, if government is now worried about its bad image, it should definitely dress up.
Morgan Muhindo.
[email protected].
