2016 ELECTIONS
The elections of 2016 have started attracting attention and
this is partly why it is important for Northern Uganda. Many people look to
each election time as a window of opportunity to change personal fortune.
Elections in Uganda can be treacherous. The cost of democracy is expensive
which means that people stake out their votes to the highest bidder. Elections
platforms have failed to catch the fragmented interests of the voters who don’t
trust politicians.
The year 2016 marks exactly 30 years of tragedy for Northern
Uganda. Out of the 30 years of NRM rule, Northern Uganda has had 8 yrs of peace,
and 10 years by 2016. Since The LRA Peace Accord in 2006, some normalcy has
returned - the majority of interned Acholi have returned to their ancestral homes,
albeit impoverished and disenfranchised.
The significance of 2016 therefore serves to re-invent
identity, revitalization and re-entry to the mainstream. The theoretical basis of
the 20 years of war in Northern Uganda was to achieve a social transformation
in the region. The NRM leadership promulgated that people from Northern Uganda
were chauvinists, primitive, killers and therefore deserving of a forceful transformation.
The war was orchestrated and sustained through critical
fronts: depriving the region of livestock, mass displacement of people from
their natural habitats, destruction of their farmlands and degradation of their
environment. Northern Uganda today endures horrifying deficit in land cover as deforestation
has left that countryside plain. In fact one can now stand in Gulu and is able
to see with his natural sight, the borders of Uganda and Sudan because there
are no more trees. Much of the plants in Northern Uganda today are shrubs,
thorns and stunted plants. Most of the large trees that once provided canopy, regulated
wind-flow, weather, atmospheric water, minimized soil erosion, and provided niche
for wildlife, are no more.
The elections of 2016 are significant because it is about
post conflict recovery. It will set a new tone for the electorates to choose
between a new breed of leaders who are capable of peacetime leadership through social
innovation and population based resource mobilization to revitalize the rural
and urban economies in the Northern Uganda region, and those stuck in conflict
mindset.
The challenges of Northern Uganda are numerous, but the
critical ones are associated with the number of young, uneducated, orphaned and
sickly young people. Most of them are unemployed or in between menial labor
such that they have no time to discover their true identities outside what the
regime says of them. The economic magic of peaceful Uganda has not fully
embraced Northern Uganda. There are signs of slow reintegration taking place as
new buildings are sprouting and low end middle class is emerging. This has
illustrated the resiliency of the people, but also reveals a deeper need for a
more ideological orientation specifically to tackle post conflict challenges
such as pervasive sense of hopelessness, undiagnosed post traumatic stressors,
maladjustment leading to self destructive activities such as chronic alcoholism
and underclass mannerism leading to sex risks for contracting and spreading
HIV.
The 2016 elections provide a potential for the Northern
Uganda population to take the stride towards complete recovery. The real
recovery and reintegration of Northern Uganda into the mainstream has been
predicted to last over 40 years. For now, each election should be utilized to
select leaders who have the vision, tenacity and capacity to lay foundation for
recovery.
END
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