Ugandan Politics: The Commentators’ Dilemma

I chanced upon this comment by Angelo Izama on Uganda’s opposition. Interesting as it is to read, he, like many commentators on Ugandan politics, seem more comfortable in concentrating on the obvious. Here are a few points I left on the post:

1. Walk to Work protests, Angelo might like to be enlightened, did not originate from civil society. None of its architects – Mathias Mpuuga, Muwanga Kivumbi, Ingrid Turinawe, Anne Mugisha – is in civil society. On the contrary, they’re all opposition politicians who have contested for parliamentary seats. Mpuuga, the campaign’s leader represents one of the many municipalities in Central Uganda.

2. Commentators of Ugandan politics, and Angelo has cut his place in the club, like to say of the opposition how “fractious and badly organized” they’re. What they never say is how that opposition can cohere and organize better. It’s high time these commentators upped their analysis by pointing out ways the opposition can cohere and organize better. Otherwise, a concentration on the obvious isn’t helping much.

3. That Museveni can raid the treasury and literally buy an election and then Angelo and his kind call that a resounding victory reveals that perhaps regime change after one man holding power for a quarter century is as legitimate as building other supporting democratic institutions to elections like the Judiciary, a strong and independent parliament.

4. The corruption and immorality that is all too pervasive in Uganda, and that Museveni has presided over, is equivalent to subversion, as he rightly said himself recently. His raid on the treasury to buy an election when every basic human need is in intensive care is just one of many examples of this. So, getting rid of the man cannot be any less important than fixing these systems. Otherwise, does Angelo have any way of fixing such systems when one does not have control of the state?

5. It is true Museveni and his NRM might well crumble under the weight of their cumulative errors but the role of the opposition in engaging the state and exposing these errors is certainly not a negligible one. How else would he have been compared to Amin had Dr Besigye not stood his ground to demand equal treatment like everyone in terms of free movement and association?