The claim that opposition leaders strive to become western puppets has pervaded the current Uganda election landscape. Mr. Kaboggoza Kibudde, in the DM of December 20, 2020, penned an article titled: We need leaders who will not be Western puppets”. The article was strange and exposed the author to scrutiny. Mr. Kaboggoza took a swipe at Dr. Kizza Besigye and Hon. Robert Kyagulanyi for seeking and mobilizing foreign support in their effort to ouster the lifelong western darling, dictator Museveni from power.
For purposes of convenience, Mr. Kaboggoza cherry-picked facts and distorted history to support his arguments. First, Mr. Kaboggoza compares Dr. Kiiza’s claims to have won elections that were rigged to the bogus claims that outgoing US president, Trump is making. This is typically comparing oranges with stones.
Mr. Kaboggoza should know that Mr. Donald Trump is an incumbent president who lost an election.
The election that Trump lost was within precincts of a functional democratic institution operated by people of great integrity, the same system which made Trump President.
Incidentally, most of the prominent elected officials in the Trump contested states are Republicans, most of whom Trump recommended for those positions. Mr. Kaboggoza’s comparisons are as fake as Trump’s own litany of cases which have failed to progress in court for lack of evidence.
Neither Dr. Kiiza nor Hon. Kyagulanyi have been Presidents, and none could survive the nexus of global forces in which Uganda must operate. Uganda has long been a victim of neocolonialism, in which Mr. Museveni is the most reliable puppet of the western powers in the region. No one in the African continent has curved in so fundamentally to the whims of the West as Mr. Museveni over the decades.
Mr. Kabogozza may e one of the bazukulus who hardly read history or was too young to have known the evolution of Mr. Museveni from 1986 to date. The Museveni who promised Ugandans a fundamental change in 1986 is not the same Museveni we have today. In 1986 Museveni spoke very spitefully of western powers and imperialism. He preached Pan Africanism and formed various economic blocs, such as the Preferential Trade Area (PTA), and later was instrumental in forming the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) with a view of enhancing Africa's autonomy and reducing dependence on Western Markets. The 1986 Museveni believed that Africans were cheated in global trades controlled by the industrial west. In fact, at one point, Museveni even proposed that Africa should resort to barter trade to undermine the influence of US dollars.
When Museveni came to government, Margaret Thatcher was in power in the UK from 1979 and Ronald Reagan defeated Jimmy Carter in a US election on November 4, 1980. These two ultra-conservative leaders were ferocious in their single-minded promotion of the free-market economy. The two leaders enacted policies that ignited a wave of global neoliberalism as the solution to the post-1970s economic woes.
Museveni’s early Presidency was faced with mounting foreign debt repayment challenges and the country was faltering on all its debts. The World Bank and IMF were emphatic against such loan defaulters and urged these failed states to adopt a system that could reboot their economies to guarantee debt servicing.
In October of 1987, Museveni flew to an IMF/WB meeting and later met President Ronald Reagan. That meeting whitewashed the Marxist Guerilla in Museveni. Museveni returned a US and western puppet from that time. That visit prepared Uganda for the worst. Museveni was ideologically reorientated to the liberal free-market economy.
By 1990 we had devalued our currency and embarked on structural adjustment programs – retrenchment, radical disposal of national assets, and opening of the private sector while suppressing public service. The rest is history.
Over the years, Museveni has not denounced his links with Sweden, his dealings with lobbyists in Washington DC and the European Union, and the UK foreign office. Museveni’s friendship with Israel, Russia, China, North Korea, etc., remains public knowledge; his rental mercenary business in Somalia to the US and imperial control of DRC and Southern Sudan among others, have paved the way for the perpetual exploitation of resources by his western allies - a public knowledge too!
Mr. Kabogozza, if we are to talk about a western puppet amidst us, no African leader, other than Cameroon’s Biya, who literally lives in Switzerland, can challenge Museveni. For, Museveni’s very hold on power depends on his being an effective stooge managing neo-imperialist wars and a market economy in the region.
