Without Electoral Reforms, 2016 is Meaningless

UGANDA ELECTS

The news that the NRM dominated Parliament rejected all the seventeen (17) proposals, containing the core areas recommended for electoral reforms, leaves this country in a dire strait. It also offers no credibility to the current Electoral Commission, and does not guarantee that the 2016 general elections will be free or fair elections.  Without dialogue and reforms to the electoral laws, the 2016 elections are meaningless.

Going into 2016 for the Opposition looks like a free man willingly ceding his freedom to a tyrant. Let us not mince words; without elaborate and widely agreed upon electoral reforms, there is no pretence about the quality or manner of conduct of any elections in Uganda.

I envisage tough times coming ahead of Ugandans after 2016 if this elections were to be mishandled. These are critical moments for Ugandans to rise up in defence of the ongoing peace and tranquil. One needs to understand that the concept of national security is not about the presence of armed men loitering villages and manning major highways with weaponry. It is about the conviction among citizens, that their living conditions are just and tenable. When citizens feel that they have control over their destinies, and can freely negotiate for common goods and to share liabilities, then we, as a nation, will enjoy stability.

The Uganda that is evolving under the NRM regime is that nurturing intolerance and greed around safeguarding power. The People of Uganda are feeling the emptiness associated with disempowerment. And yet, we have a regime that is constipated with power. These disparities are the ingredients that feed the seeds of violence and instability in society, however sophisticated it is.

I prophesy that, if we continue on this path, Uganda will slide into a graveyard in the near future. Unless Museveni wants to transform Uganda into a prototype of North Korea, there is no way he will continue with this belligerence. The Civil Society and the Opposition have endured the pain of providing alternative policy proposals to government. At least they have played their roles. A healthy democracy is adjudged by the vibrancy of its opposition and civil society. 

A government which fears competition will also thwart any possibility for highlighting its oversights.  Without these options, a balancing act in governance cannot obtain for public good. No one has monopoly over righteousness and no one person, least for a corrupted regime, to be right at all. The essence of democracy is that dissenters are treated with decency, humility, and respect for the beauty of diversity.

Rejecting the reform proposals also indicate that the Parliament is in contempt of the will of the people. It is becoming apparently clear that the regime would pander to reforms proposed by America or Britain, but will reject those from its own people. It just starts to feel that we are in the era of slave trade where the Chiefs conspired to sell its own people. By dis-empowering its people, modern slavery or savagery has become the novelty of the NRM regime.

Intolerance though, is a recipe for disaster because it alienates agents from the mainstream to the periphery, eventually excluding them. When the locus of dissent realigns itself, and finds a new shape outside the shades of the state, then other forms of liberation modalities may be chosen over a stale democracy.

The problem of a military dictatorship is that it is inundated by its investments in the industry of coercion. History has shown to us that no amount of weaponry and coercion can restrain a critical mass with full consciousness of their repression.

President Museveni is a legend of a revolution with contempt for democracy and elections. He scorns the ballot for the bullet. Demanding for free and fair elections is a waste of time. The fear of internal democracy within NRM demonstrates that the Presidency is up for grabbing, forcefully.

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No-Term Limit debate: What really is Africa's problem?

No -Term vs Term Limit

The debate over term limits has taken a new twist in Rwanda where the Parliament is debating whether to remove or retain it. If, it were removed, President Paul Kagame will have a free ride as President for many more years to come. Rwanda’s Presidential terms are seven years long.

Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame has exceeded expectations of a new breed of leaders of Africa. He has done a tremendous job in piecing together a country that was fragile - broken apart by the 1994 genocide. Rwanda’s economy is now a class apart, compared to that of Uganda. Public institutions in Rwanda functions; healthcare systems address the health needs of its people, and so, are the schools, and transportation system. Most, or all of Rwanda’s public services function to near efficiency, compared to its regional neighbors. Should term limits force Kagame to retirement?

The problem of Africa is not term limits. In fact, President Museveni’s credibility underscores his assessment of Africa’s problems as that of leadership. His stinging attack on leaders who stay in power for too long was the mainstay for the justification of term limits in the 1995 Constitution.

Africa is the only continent that has inexhaustible resources, having been exploited for nearly 1000 years. On its own, the continent has shown tremendous resilience. Paradoxically, Africa is also the continent that accommodates the poorest population in the world. Most of them are sickly, dying young and living precariously in degraded environment.

This begs the question: what really is Africa’s problem?

The case for term limits, or no-term limits to me is immaterial. Africa has had leaders who have ruled for life and died as Presidents. Their records should argue it out for the no-term limits’ proponents. Africa has also endured its brand of democracy, where countries have changed leaders very often under strict term limit; Tanzania, South Africa, Rwanda, Burundi, Zambia, and Kenya. There are enormous opportunities in those countries for us to study and draw a conclusion either in support of, or against term limits.

While we may turn to term limits as a panacea to some of our problems, let us also examine whether its shortcomings emanates from our brand of democracy. If not, then we have to take a conscious exploration of whether, as Africans, we do fully understand the art and science of governance as a whole, and the value of the wealth, Africa as a continent, has for us.

The glaring convergence of the term vs no-term limit debate is that the predicaments of all these states are nearly the same. All African states are susceptible to incurable poverty, death from avoidable diseases, broke-down public infrastructure, widespread corruption, sectarianism and nepotism,and untenable environment. More-so, historical blemishes from slavery and colonial era, remain etched in the conscience of these nations, indelibly.

The proponents of term limits have valid points, given our circumstances: Term limit allows a break in a vicious cycle of bad governance and warped ideologies. One of the theories of healthy public policy posits that, policy opportunities usually arise by the punctuation of the equilibrium after a period of stasis. Without a disruption in this stability, policy modifications are disenchanted. This gives rise to the “No Change” sloganeering of NRM. Term limit allows for fair distribution of resources because African leadership inherently attracts nepotism. Today, the Banyankore, or “westerners” are viewed as people who have “eaten things”. A change of government would shift the locus of benefits to areas that are perceived to be deprived. Term limit allows the nation to experience peaceful change of regime. Such, is a strong indication of a nation’s stability or cohesion. Term limit allows the nation to discover from within it, limitless possibilities. By drawing from its talent pool of innovators, a nation nurtures competent and patriotic leaders. It is also a guarantee that access to top leadership is open to everyone, not ring-fenced. The people’s power materializes when they are able to cause, witness, and experience peaceful change in governance and their realities. Therefore, term limit is critical, but merely part of, not the solution in itself, to Africa’s problems.

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Tipping the moral scale: Forgiving the Amins

FORGIVING AMIN

 

The colorful return and burial of Sarah Kyolaba Amin's remains few days ago attracted attention globally. The Iddi Amin name still turn heads around the world. Where I live, people I interact with still identify Uganda by evoking Idd Amin's name. People here in North America do not really know much about the outside world. A tiny country like Uganda falls outside their TV radar. The world is known only through the screens of the television propaganda. The various portrayal of Idd Amin in movies makes Uganda visible in that light - of cruelty.

 

Sarah Amin lived a humble life in London, where she operated a small restaurant and later a saloon. Her humility and motherly pose attracting many Ugandans, some of whom, lived in exile since the 70s in fear of her husband. But in Sarah's company, they found convergence given that she spoke very little about her past life as wife to a tyrant. Her customers showed that they have transcended past traumas associated with Amin's regime.

 

Iddi Amin Dada might have been that monster as he was portrayed. People now see and appreciate that Amin, with all his flaws and cruelty, left legacies of both horror and comedy. In typical Shakespearean presentation of Macbeth,true life is, after-all, defined as tragedy, and where fantasy be-gets comedy. But we also appreciate Amin now as an incomparable nationalist in light of other Uganda's Presidents.

 

The homily that President Museveni accorded Sarah's family; the pledges to pay tuition; and offers of land to allow the return of the family, are all gestures of goodwill. It reaffirms a tipping of the moral scale, where we forgive without forgetting.

 

However, whatever gestures we, as Ugandans offer the Amin's family, ran short of depth of the trueness of humanity if we are unable to forgive their deceased father. Forgiving Idd Amin is good, not for reconciliation's sake, or for letting the past go. It is good for our conscience and well-being.

 

The more we hang on to our dark past, the more we relive those traumas. And yet, in forgiving Amin, we take the courage to sober recollect, to reflect on the tragedies of the past as a whole, not in bits. Uganda has not been a well governed country. It is rich with traumatic moments. Each leader comes with his solution to such problems, but degenerates quickly, into a problem, and a burden, to the country. It just shows that history is not our teacher. We exploit our dark history but learn nothing from it. Somehow, that past has found a place in our psyche where it torments us, and cripples us from developing prudence.

 

I, therefore, take this opportunity to request the Museveni regime to retrieve the remains of Idd Amin and bring it back for burial at home. The man is dead. His remains should not be punished and treated with contempt. The remains have nothing to loose, but we, who are survivors of his cruelty, do. The more we keep his remains far away, the more we retain a looming cloud of unnecessary importance to his brands.

 

Strangely, no matter how President Museveni sells Uganda abroad, people do not care about his gorillas or brand of pseudo-democracy. Returning the remains of Idd Amin to his ancestral home, will attract more attention to Uganda, than all the Gorillas and tourism endeavours.

 

But for the President, such a gesture must be profitable to be pursued. It must endear the Kakwa people to him, as a President. This is how the government hijacked the noble efforts of the late Bazillio Okellos' children to retrieve the remains of their father for a descent reburial in his final resting place, in Muchwini. Maybe the Amin clan should ride on this wave to begin the process, just before the 2016 general elections. Who knows how the President will react!

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