POLITICS
The concluded debates between President Museveni and Dr Kiiza
Besigye have provided insight into important aspect of our politics. It has attempted
to reshape the culture of hostility to that of civility. Although the tone of
President Museveni remains combative, I found that Dr. Besigye weighed in with
a sense of measure and a focus on crucial political issues.
This article is a rejoinder to Mr. Timothy Kalyegira’s
analysis of the debate between the two political opponents in “Assessing
Museveni’s debate with Besigye”, published in the DM of February 17th,
2013. The central premise of this article is to loud the optimism that Mr.
Museveni has chosen in public discourse, in writing, and not by sending perceived
opponents to jail. This gesture is indeed a departure from tradition and signs
that someday, Ugandans will be able to witness a televised civil debate between
Presidential contestants, a feat that our neighbouring Kenya achieved recently.
There are many ways that these debates could be assessed.
Although Mr. Kalyegira in his assessment determined that both leaders handled
their issues in a similar manner and accorded them draw performance. I would slightly
disagree. What was very remarkable and deserves mention were the language that
Mr. Museveni used and the framing of his “enemies” or “enemies of the state”.
For instance, to designate the Daily Monitor or any other
media outlet that provides equal platform for expression of ideals and values
as an “enemy” is both ideologically and constitutionally self defeating and
diversionary.
The Daily Monitor publication has remained the most objective
and non-partisan news media in Uganda. For that, it has weathered much storm but
remained steadfast in providing a platform for scrutiny of societal issues at
large. President Museveni has, in the last year resorted to framing any
dissenting voices as charlatans, liars, enemies and so forth. These are
unfortunate labeling because the public expects much from the President and
they are getting little, each year.
One of the challenges of this regime is lack of transparency
in sharing information. Naturally, Journalists will speculate if they suspect
or become curious of any events and are denied information. Instead of calling
them liars, banning their media and incarcerating the members of the fourth
estate, why doesn’t NRM enact enabling policies of transparency in information sharing?
This would enhance the quality of reporting and public education that are
agreeable to the President and all citizens. Does it interest the President to
realize that Ugandans know more about premier league soccer teams such as
Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea etc than government affairs and NRM
history?
The other paradox is the culture of denial. The NRM is a hub
of deniers – group of people who lie with flat faces, because they would rather
deny that face public scrutiny. Whenever they are put to task to account, the
first line of defence is denial and manipulation of facts. Don’t we still
remember the dramatic events that unveiled during the sham Dr. Besigye trial
for fake rape and the lies of then CID, Elizabeth Kuteesa? If you want to
document these lies, try to collate press releases from NRM spokespersons from
1986 and including UPDF public relations statements. These should be great
sources of information for a full Masters’ thesis. Everything they say contradicts
what the public knows and expect. This mindset is exactly how Mr. Museveni
attempted to conceal the recruitment of his son, Muhoozi, into the army and the
astronomical elevation in rank, the biased selection for military courses and
training leading to his expedited leadership rise to the helm of the elite
forces – leave alone the abuse of uniform explanation.
The most interesting construct that this debate gave life to,
was projection. In human psychology, projection is attributing certain
distasteful aspect of one’s character to others. For instance, people who lie a
lot always expect that others will lie, cowards will always expect to be
attacked even at peace time, so they amass enormous protection; thieves will garrison
themselves in fortified homes for fear of being robbed even when they know that
their property came from proceeds of corruption or theft.
This brings me to the repeated use of strong words such as
charlatan, liar (lies), enemies, chauvinist, terrorists etc. The online
dictionary defines “charlatan” as someone who is a quack, basically pretending
to have more knowledge than s/he knows [from
Cynic satirist Lucian of Samosata – “The Philosopher Charlatan” who
drinks the Lether water (forgetfulness) and conducts himself exactly the
opposite of what he preached earlier on]. In that rebuttal, Mr. Museveni also
referred to “opinionated” individuals. Given our history and most specifically
the history of NRA or its precursor, Fronasa, the entire liberation project was
premised on lies and manipulation in the name of ideology of social
transformation. To project these attributes on others is again self defeating
because so many people in the NRMO party now know what they didn’t know back in
1980s and early 90s about their Party and its leaders.
Mr. Museveni himself has regurgitated his own words many
times; he derided African leaders who over stay in power as the real problem of
Africa. Recently on BBC, Mr. Museveni was reported to have said that he is too
experienced to leave power after 27 years; When Multi-party elections came to
play, Mr. Museveni vowed that he would serve two terms; then he wanted to consolidate
his gains and later changed to “No change”. All these flip flops are the roots
of evil in our society because there are no principles and truth in our
leadership.
In conclusion, I believe that Dr Besigye and the Monitor
newspapers were the real winners of this debate. The DM was even courageous to
provide a platform for this debate considering the many false accusations
including that it distorted the words of the President previously.
END
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