Defiance and non-compliance inevitable in Uganda's election

Defiance, Non-compliance

The "defiance, non-compliant" campaign is a unique and effective approach – something very original for an electoral environment that is naturally skewed to favor the incumbent. The FDC team have exemplified a unique understanding of the challenges in uprooting an established repressive system supplanted for nearly 30 years. It is the price of an enduring experience of self-sacrifice from a true freedom fighter, Rtd. Col. Dr Kiiza Besigye, and an excellent Party leadership behind him.

The main agenda of the Team WesigeBesigye2016 is to focus on the rural voter - the peasants. In most of the rallies, we see a lot of people trekking from their rural communities to towns to catch a glimpse of the contestants. We even see bus loads and trucks ferrying paid NRM audience to Mr. Museveni's rallies. This time, KB has taken the campaigns to the rural communities where voters are. 

The second, and most interesting, is clarity of the defiance, non-compliance agenda framing. The defiant travel through nearly impassable roads are endearing KB to his voters. The Team KB's travelling to remote countryside has expose the immense neglect and under-development in these communities. KB has been speaking directly to the masses about vote theft and how to protect their votes. 

The third feature of Team WesigeBesigye2016 campaign is the steadfastness of the defiance. Outlining the fact that the Kiggundu-led Electoral Commission is unable to organize a free and fair elections. This message is resonating. Given the P10 innovation, voters are getting prepared to protect the ballot boxes to ensure that there is no characteristic stuffing of pre-ticked votes, and that the integrity of the ballot boxes are not compromised before any voting begins anywhere in Uganda as seen in NRM Primaries.

The prospects for change in 2016 is beckoning. It must come to pass, and Ugandans should brave themselves to ensure that a peaceful transfer of power is made possible. 

There are people who swear that such a moment of national joy will never come in 2016. Given the unfair electoral environment, it is normal to be pessimistic. 

However, the minimum expectation of the Kiggundu-led Commission, is to ensure that they honor the constitutional provision that power belongs to the people, and that people are free to exercise their power as they so wish. Any tinkering with the exercise of this power, could potentially destabilize this nation.

Therefore, non-compliance is justified in this elections to encourage voters' vigilance. The messages should target the Judiciary as well. In its previous rulings of 2001 and 2006, the Judges confirmed that EC elections were fraudulent. However, they were pressure by the tyrant to rule that voting irregularities were not significant in determining the overall outcome.  That oxymoron effectively rubber stamped an illegitimate regime and legitimized electoral frauds in Uganda.

It is only dishonest for the judicial system to allow injustice and inequities to govern this beautiful nation. The totality of electoral outcomes should not only be determined by what happens at the ballot and its outcome. The bigger picture should consider preceding circumstances and the environment that permits or limits equal participation.

In a country where Police, the Military and all security agencies are partisan, and where the Police recruits millions of "crime preventers" for the incumbent, a red flag should be flying high. Further, with so much incumbency privileges that allows the sitting President to run government, use state privileges and resources as he pleases, it is an ingenius device to claim that the EC can create a level playing field. Of course, such, is the defect in the 1995 Constitution. However, the Supreme Court should provide a remedial directive on such entrenched inequities. There is too much power vested in the Presidency. 

Therefore, contesting within the Kiggundu's Rules of Injustice disenfranchises any participant. In fact, it is almost natural, that the moment a candidate complies with the Kiggundu's Rules, they become irrelevant.

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Campaigns exposes under-development in NRM Western Uganda strongholds

UNDER-DEVELOPMENT

Until the Elect-Besigye Campaign team got stuck in impassable mud roads in Kisoro, very few of us expected such under-development in this region. In fact, the most surprising, was the sight of broken bridges in Ruhama and the school children dancing bear feet, wearing rag-tag uniforms in youtube clips. I asked myself, what happened to all these NRM leaders who claim that they are God-sent to salvage the people from poverty, ill-health and inadequate resources? If the startling pictures of impoverished people in this region is not testimony enough to the inadequacy of this regime, what else do we need to convince our people that change is inevitable, now?

I have held on to a personal prejudice that areas that have traditionally embraced the NRM and voted for it, 89% and over, are also the areas that suffer the most in under development. While few individual from these areas have benefited from the perks of political patronage, isolated areas like Kisoro suffers silently.

Take for instance Busoga, Bunyoro, Tooro and Kigezi as a whole. These areas are very loyal to the NRM and have always voted overwhelmingly for the regime. While a lot of individuals from here have enjoyed disproportionate access to state resources; jobs and privileges, the regions stagnated in development far behind those areas that do not rely on this government.

The number of people from Kigezi and Ankole who are in lucrative and influential public positions; in the civil service – Police, Army, Banks, Education and all sectors of society, supersedes those from any other regions combined. Kisoro's under-development clearly attests that personal gains have not been translated into public gains. This reaffirms the premise of Dr Kiiza Besigye's argument that the NRM has stolen from the public and lavished self-seeking individuals who are investing in Kampala, or stashing money in foreign accounts. The ordinary village folk has remained unattended to, and rural infrastructure have decayed.

The contradictions in this government is what inspires corruption. People are fleeing away from villages, selling their lands to afford boda-boda and other trades because agro-based production, the back-bone of our economy, is no longer lucrative and attractive. Most of the resources have been siphoned to cater for an extremely high cost of public administration and defense of the status quo. Unfortunately, the President believes that he can have himself a private jet, helicopter, fleet of expensive automobiles to facilitate a King's life, while the people he leads can wallop in dehumanizing poverty.

Numerous poverty alleviation programs have been hatched from 2001 to this date. Those programs have proven incompatible with the zeal of the people. These programs come fully charged with politics. Recipients must belong to, or appear to support the person of President Museveni before s/he can access loans or whatever seeds and cows that the government is vending.

At the end of it all, poverty has become endemic and the government is now targeting the poor, not poverty, or the underlying historical and social inequities that generate poverty and sustains it. People are increasingly realizing that the Museveni government has gone too far in reversing the Robinhood heroism that taught us that it is ethical to rob from the rich and give to the poor. The NRM mercilessly robs from the poor, lavishes rich individuals, and subdues its poor with Mambas.

The real problem with Ugandans is apathy - low threshold for outrage, and no imagination for a real peaceful change of government. It is embedded in the tumultuous history of this country that Mr. Museveni himself exploits. Otherwise, the scary underdevelopment all over the country, given the 30 uninterrupted years of NRM rule, could have provided sufficient ground for passing a harsh judgement on it, at the 2016 elections. In the pursuit of decorum, Museveni himself is the active ingredient of instability. People should not fear change. Living in Kisoro defeats any logic of sustaining Museveni in power.

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A reflection on violent NRM Primaries

ELECTION VIOLENCE

The just concluded NRM primaries were eye openers upon which, 2016 political actors should reflect on as we head to the general elections. The manner in which these primaries were conducted revealed a lot of absurdity about the democratic credentials of NRM. Obviously, the first casualty of the primaries was its own internal democracy.

 

While the spin doctors want to paint the chaos that marred these elections as a sign of the party's popularity in the country, civil people with low tolerance for violence would think otherwise. The chaos, to many, reflected the inherent nature of NRM, and the false internal cohesion.

 

Many people look up to the NRM, not as a political Party with an appealing ideology. They look at it as a cash-cow, or a milk machine to extort Uganda.  To them, NRM is the assured platform for personal aggrandizement through plundering national resources.

 

Therefore, any opportunity to board that bus, is one to kill for. None of those violent people are inherently violent, nor are the violent acts we witnessed, random. Those people are conditioned to partake violence through endurance of depravity.

 

Museveni's NRM operates using carrot and sticks methods. If you support the Party, you may gain access to national resources – not Party resources. The Party is fused with the state from its neck downwards. The closer you are to the temple of power, the higher the probability of grabbing on the milking machine.

 

The second victim of the primaries are common-sense and civility – the severe lack of basic principle of courtesy due to endemic distrust between the eating class and euphoric enthusiasts. Even calm and sober people were ready to rip each other apart like wild animals, just to win. The glaring lack of order in this Party is jaw-dropping. No institution functions independent of Museveni, and efficiently.

The third and most important of all was a revelation of impunity, callousness and debauchery. All the vices associated with previous national elections became manifest in this elections. The magnitude of ballot stuffing was simply shocking. Social media was awash with video clips of young men pre-ticking ballots.

The fourth victim was integrity of elections. Strangely, candidates in some parts of the country had the opportunity to transport their own ballot materials from the Police station. The word irregularity does not even capture this particular madness enough. But the picture of the Police officer in uniform, casting his ballot, could not have salvaged the image of the Police as an impartial force. Opprobriously.

When Deputy Speaker Jacob Oulanya decried that the Party "bit more than it could chew" for this elections, one would think otherwise. This Party has a fully fledged Secretariat, staffed to the teeth. Its Electoral Commission is funded lavishly and in excess. The EC has not complained of lack of money, transport , or staffing. What could have gone wrong?

 

Here again we look at this as the continuity of the grand inefficiencies prevalent in all government institutions; the incompetence, the inattention to details, the arrogance, corruption, and culture of taking everything for granted while flourishing on titles – (arrivalism).

 

In short, the NRM EC exhibited incompetence and inexperience. These vices feature in the general elections. 

 

In the NRM primaries, we saw how numbers were victimized. In many polling stations, ballot papers were inadequate. In some areas, there were mysterious candidates, others omitted, or not listed on the ballot papers. This shows clearly that the EC was in total disarray - incompetent, uncoordinated, or negligent. 

 Above all, this primaries goes down as the most chaotic elections ever held in Uganda's history.

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The tainted conscience of a tyranny

VERACITY AND FIDELITY

In Ethics, Veracity is the principle of truth telling. It is grounded in valuing and respecting a person and concept of autonomy. In any society that victimizes the truth, untruth is institutionalized. With it, the respect for the person and autonomy are trampled upon at will.

There has been a sustained debate as to whether President Museveni and his NRM have the conscience or credential for democracy when they openly advance untruths about their false democratic ideals. Evidences available from the rampant run-ins with the Opposition groups evinces the stark realities of a tainted conscience of a tyranny.

The Webster dictionary defines conscience as "part of the mind that allows you to be aware of your actions as being either morally right or wrong", or, a "feeling that something you have done, or about to do, is morally right or wrong". Every conscientious person has a clarity based on their values and the valuing of the other except those in power. 

When a leader deliberately perpetuate untruths, then such a leader lacks respect for the subjects.  Such a leader is an obscurantist – someone whose trade is to obscure, manipulate the truth. The fundamental drive of such willy-nilly obscurantism is to perpetuate control over. But it may also arise out of innate sense of inadequacy and incessant desire for approval by others.

Naturally, it is diabolical to expect that a life of untruth, can magically transform into inverse outcomes. Obscurantism generates chaos because obscurantists are difficult to understand, and are most likely to be understood by only a few people. They are a mystery of sort - impossible to know completely or with certainty. 

The Philosopher, Thomas Aquinas, maintained that a judgement is true when it conforms to an external reality.

A society presided over by an obscurantist operates under chaos, turmoil, disorder, disarray to obscure the external realities. This article has not explored the role of social chaos as a mode of social control, and its effectively in Uganda. However, the cost of sustaining a regime of chaos has been costly. The high corruption is a form of payment to sustain this state of anarchy. The constant erosion of the conscience of Ugandans to everything collective and the steady decay in public service, or widespread apathy to government speaks for themselves.

Further, the concept of truth is complex and dynamic. Truth itself is characteristically relational to some portion of reality – metaphysics. This is the vain exploit of the obscurantist leader, for his/her construct of reality is mutually opposed to objective realities of his subjects.

The principle of Veracity is interlinked with that of Fidelity – being, or showing faithfulness to a person, cause, or belief. Nations that develop, and whose citizens are patriotic, have emerged from a firm founding, and numerous of its social contracts are replete with basic principles of veracity and fidelity. Veracity and Fidelity are conscientiously embedded in societal discourses. When such a situation obtains, citizens feel an overwhelming sense of satisfaction, comfort, trust, commitment and pride and become accountable to the collective.

The youths of such a nation willingly sacrifice their lives to sustain the integrity of such a society. The elders of such a society would openly embrace the valour of their youths as worthy and befitting. In a just system, there is everything to protect, everything to exalt.

In these regards, one sees very little value in the NRM abraded democracy packaged as "regular elections". Paradoxically, the magnitude of restraining forces that are employed against the process, undermines the integrity of subsequent government. The selective application of repressive laws such as Public Order Management Act to curtail, humiliate, cow, and immobilize the Opposition, only illustrates how undemocratic and obscurantist, this regime and its leaders are. Certainly, the Police brutality confirms the unfortunate circumstance of a tainted conscience of a regime of chaos.

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Uganda's Opposition Hands are tied behind the back

UNEVEN FIELDS

It is truly absurd how the Uganda Police is acting to hamper the democratic process leading to 2016 general elections. At the current manner of Operations and the operating laws such as POMA, we all agree that the Opposition have both their hands tied behind their backs.  The Police is violating the fundamental principles of Free and Fair environment associated supportive of a healthy democracy. It is important for the operators of the state to be reminded that half a democracy is not democracy at all. You cannot place a man's feet on fire, his head in a bucket of ice, his hands tied behind his back, and conclude that the man is averagely OK. Those kind of skewed analyses are better left for statisticians, not democrats.

In the last couple of months, the NRM candidates campaigned in the countryside willy-nilly. Last week, the lack of internal democracy in the Party resulted in a pandemonium at every polling station of NRM countrywide. In fact, all the malpractices attributed to previous general elections manifested. There were numerous cases of ballot stuffing with pre-ticked balloting. In Masaka, one respondent observed huge envelops of pre-ticked ballots being stuffed in the box. The rigging were so severe that results were openly switched, such that the losers became winners.

As a result, the voters rioted. NRM cards were torn, burned, peed upon or fed to the pigs; Museveni's campaign posters were torn and peed on. NRM offices were torched down and even the home of one NRM official in Luwero was gutted down by an irate NRM Arsonist.

While all these are happening in the country, the absence of the riot Police or its brutality were well noticed. The irate NRM crowd rioted undeterred until they cooled down on their own accord. Last week, the NTV captured the people in Luwengo District castigating their Chairman there. They burnt his effigies and beat up unarmed Police and agents of the Luwengo LCV who attempted to interfere.

In all these chaos and pandemonium of savagery proportion, you do not find riot police or the kind of Police macho seen around peaceful Opposition groups. Nothing!

Events of last week were near tragedy; the Police's attempted assassination of Dr Kiiza Besigye and the Leader of the Opposition were the highlights. The undressing of the women activists cast the Police in shameful shade. Then they went into fits of action, arresting the Opposition leaders for trying to establish their campaign offices. The images of Hon. Ibrahim Ssemuju Nganda with his torn suit and face behind bars; and those of  Dr Kiiza Besigye in jail conjured up an indelible legacy of undisputed tyranny for this regime.

For posterity's sake, nowhere in the history of Uganda, or Sub-Sahara Africa has a regime inhibited its Opposition and humiliated women of its nation like this NRM regime. The environment continues to exclude those with divergent views from the governance of this country. I fear excessively that if this Police brutality continues, the masses will decide to retaliate and a blood-bath will ensue.

The Electoral Commission and the Police are playing monkey games to deny the Opposition time to select its flag bearers in the lower levels of government. The Police's deliberately demands that Opposition seeks permission to campaign, or to cause a campaign gathering. This is a violation, and criminal act by the Police. The exercising of POMA during election period must be interpreted by a competent court. This is stifling our democracy. POMA already took away citizen's freedoms and handed it to the state. There must be a limit or an exception to it's application during elections. Fundamental human rights should not be subject to the State for dispensation. It is criminal. Rights are inalienable and should be protected by the state, not curtailed or dispensed by it. The Opposition groups should rethink the worth of soldiering on against a tyranny with both their hands tied behind their back.

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Contextualizing Uganda Police's bias under Gen Kayihura

POLICE BIAS

The Uganda Police Force’s gruesome arrests and interferences in the internal processes of the Opposition Forum for Democratic Change Party must be scrutinized and contextualized. The Uganda Police is partisan and smacks of sheer politicization of crime. This is the agenda for which Gen Kayihura, the Inspector General of Police, has gained reputation.

It is simply dumfounding for the Police to conduct atrocities on peaceful civilian population - breaking peaceful processions, curtailing basic human rights, killing innocent citizens -  and then turn around, in a rather comical twist, to blame it on their helpless victims. Where is this nation’s conscience?

The manner in which Ms Fatuma Naigaga Zainab was arrested, stripped and humiliated on Masaka Road, must draw outrage.  The Officers, who illegally curtailed the liberty of Dr Kiiza Besigye’s entourage, ought to face arrest. This Police's act of bundling every suspect, into the truck typifies “panda gari”, brutality, cruelty and outright crime against the sanctity of the body, mind and spirit. We should not expect, and sustain a twenty-second century Police to degenerate into such an unconscionable monster.

It is important to contextualize this overindulgence of the UPF in politics since Gen. Kayihura has made it clear that the Police will be the one to shape the election process and its outcome.

Towards the end of 2014 when the NRM expunged its Secretary General, Mbabazi, from its system, the Mbabazi lawyers threatened to sue the NRM Party and the person of the President for many illegalities arising out of that process. Many NRM cadres were awed at how ruthless their Chairman was, given the firm, swift, moreover expensive undertaking to rid Mbabazi off the NRMO administration.

The one voice that largely went unnoticed as usual was that of the Vice President, Hon. Edward Ssekandi. Hon. Ssekandi was quoted in the media to have advised the NRM delegates and various Party Organs to leave everything in the hands of President Musevenit because, according to the VP, President Museveni is experienced in operating outside the law.

This observation confirmed that at least, there is one person who has spent some time to study President Museveni’s operations. Since his Fronasa days, President Museveni worked outside the laws of Uganda. When President Museveni lost elections in nearly all Police barracks in 1996, he dismissed the Police Force as an extension of the Obote and Colonial regimes. He promised to fix the Police with NRM cadres.

Thereafter, attention was focused on the Police from the time of IGP Cossy Odomel to Kisembo until the start of militarization of the Police by the appointment of the then Major General Wamala Katumba as IGP.

President Museveni had predicted that it would become increasingly hard to over indulge the military in Uganda’s elections.  He opted to repair the image of the UPDF by transferring UPDF roles in election rigging to the militarized Police.

Museveni had many cadres for the job. He had either Gen Kale Kayihura,  or the then Brig. Henry Tumukunde, the renowned and seasoned campaigner for the President, who prides himself as an expert in winning votes in Jinja, Iganda and Kamuli (Operation JIK). Museveni chose the latter.

In essence, the Uganda Police under Kayihura is an extension of the army, both in ideological orientation and physical make-up. It is unfortunate, but Uganda has no civil Police as recommended in Art 212 of the 1995 Constitution (As amended).

In August, the Director of Human Resources of the Police, Andrew Felix Kaweesi revealed that the 80% of the officers in the Criminal Investigation and Intelligence Department are incompetent (and, in fact criminals) (Ref: DM 28/08/2015). This revelation is important for us to understand how such a large proportion of Police is incompetent, while the political stream that terrorizes civilians and curtails fundamental liberties remains vicious. It simply confirms that this Police Force is primed purposely to safeguard the political interests of NRMO.

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Replenishing the Conscience of a defiant leader

REPLENISHING CONSCIENCE

Mr. Andrew Mwenda’s piece, "About our collective delusions" in the Independent is worth reading. The mainstay of this Dr. Besigye invective was that KB has become so bitter over time from experiences of humiliation and torture by the regime. Mwenda argued that this bitterness blinded KB from recognizing the progress made by the NRM, thereby compromising KB’s ability to correctly assess the current state of affairs. As such, KB has personalized the struggles for change, in the process, lost his edge in articulating attractive alternative policies for a post Museveni Uganda. Mwenda concludes that KB is empty in both rhetoric, and vision.

Mwenda would agree that a political cooperation like TDA devoid of genuine commitment, trust, and respect is a marriage that does not yield lasting affection. Such dishonesty, perhaps,  is one of the reasons the history of failed Political Alliances precedes Besigye.

The montage that is ferociously driving Hon. Amama Mbabazi's (JPAM) candidature, believes that The Democratic Alliance will hold sway merely on political blustering. The individual Opposition Parties in TDA, have struggled to forge unity in-house. Definitely they lack credentials to hold TDA together as a government-in-the-waiting. They have to restrain their affectations towards Dr Kiiza Besigye who is still a formidable force in the change narratives and in TDA.

Presenting KB as the dead weight in the change equation is a big mistake. In fact, TDA is shaping itself under the dead weight of JPAM with many “unknown knowns”, and a strong resentment in the North.

For that, I find Mwenda's trepidations conceivable, given its various contradictions.

Note that revolutions are inspired by personal ambitions shaped within personalized worldviews. These worldviews are constructed out of events that shape personal values, and ideals (conscience). Therefore, being a Change Agent starts with the person, because that role commits one – personally - to the change process and/or its perils. When revolutionists suffer tragedy, it takes a personal toll. It is such personal experiences that compound into personal convictions to shape, reaffirm, and drive their ideology.

Extra-ordinary struggler, like Nelson Mandela only dealt with the tensions between the personal and public expectations differently. Three parts to a struggle require tremendous balance for one to stay afloat; individual level - one has a family; at organizational level - one has to struggle to remain on top of conflicting ideals; and at the national level - one stands against a monstrous tyranny. This stage requires the shrewdness to galvanize diverse sentiments for change to occur. Therefore, indulgence in a revolution starts with the personal – espousing the ideals, articulating it, and mobilizing the masses.

In essence, Mwenda raises critical issues against KB that should strengthen KB's resolve to be part of the change, and realign him to the struggle that he helped to shape. To students of revolution, such experiences are a commonplace, and signify a difficult growth process from a part-time agent into the crux of it. Agents become impersonal at full submission to the struggle. This is characterized by giving the self wholly to the struggle to become impersonal. Nelson Mandela staked his family (personal) by choosing incarceration for 26 years because at that point, he had become impersonal. The lesson here is that to become impersonal to a revolution, one has to endure a process of personalization first. Personalization is about replenishing the individual’s conscience.

My defence of KB stems from three fundamental experiences: One, in recognizing that Ugandans are fond of radical spontaneity - ideas that explodes and dies fast. Flirting with JPAM, who has not presented any attractive alternative policy options - as Mwenda demands of KB - is just that adrenalin rush moment for contradictions. It is about instant gratification. This speaks badly for a protracted struggle towards a fundamental change. Two, the politics of vote numbers, make KB an important factor in the change equation. Three, ceding Opposition gains at the grassroots to NRM Go - Forward is returning Uganda to a No-Party System.