The international community should bring maximum international pressure on despotic governments like that of Uganda to decapitate their ability to subvert the will of the people, facilitate free and fair elections, and ensure that most people’s wishes prevail. Mr Bobi Wine on his part owes Uganda the debt of playing the politics of a responsible opposition.
Ugandans went to the polls last weekend in a hotly contested election and supposedly re-elected President Yoweri Museveni for a sixth term in office. He will continue his 35-year rule of the country possibly for another five years. According to official government figures, the incumbent president won 58.6 per cent of the votes, while his nearest rival, Robert Kyagulanyi, popularly known as Bobi Wine, took 38.4 per cent. This appears to be a sad commentary on democracy.
Uganda has always had problematic leadership at the very top. Since the country’s independence from Britain in 1962, there has been no peaceful handover of power. When Mr. Museveni seized the reins of power in 1986, he promised that his government would further the cause of competitive politics. Uganda had endured years of colonialism, and then dictatorship and lawlessness under Milton Obote’s rule and that of the infamous Idi Amin Dada. But in the decades since, Mr. Museveni and the ruling National Resistance Movement have clung to power through the politicized prosecution of opposition figures, while undermining the independent media and civil society.
President Museveni is a typical sit-tight African leader who would rather die in office than have a peaceful transition of power that would usher in fresh faces and ideas that can move Uganda forward. He is a former rebel who came to power 35 years ago and has since ruled the country with an iron grip. At 76, Mr. Museveni is one of Africa’s longest-serving leaders.
In 2018, Mr. Museveni signed a law that scrapped the presidential age limit of 75, a move that critics said then would allow him to seek re-election this year. Opposition legislators and lawyers challenged the amendment, but the Ugandan Supreme Court upheld it in 2019. Once the age or term limitation was removed or rendered elastic, the outcomes of future elections were more or less predetermined.
The recent presidential election was the fourth in the East African nation since multiparty politics was restored in 2005, two decades after Mr. Museveni first came to power and clamped down on competing parties, and this has been unexpectedly competitive despite fierce government attempts to stifle the opposition. The country’s politics has drawn global attention as a test of how democracy could take hold in a country more accustomed to autocratic rule.
The last Ugandan presidential election was marked by delays in ballot deliveries, voter intimidation and irregularities in vote tallying, violence, killings, and arbitrary arrests. It was an example of how not to conduct a free and fair election. From the time the campaigns kicked off in early November 2020, journalists were faced with harassment and beatings by security forces, as they covered opposition candidates. The Ugandan authorities were said to have introduced stringent accreditation rules for reporters, and even went as far as deporting foreign journalists from the country. The authorities blocked opposition candidates from appearing on radio and television stations to speak to the public.
The validity of the present election results is being contested, after many international and independent observers pulled out due to the lack of accreditation. There have also been reports of the failure of electronic voter identification systems, resulting from the internet shutdown.
With limitations on public gatherings due to pandemic restrictions, the leading opposition candidates, led by Bobi Wine, resorted to the use of social media. It provided the aspirants with possible ways of reaching many prospective voters. However, the government quickly found ways of undermining their reach through those platforms too. In December 2020, the government asked Google to block 14 YouTube channels, mostly linked to the opposition. Mr. Museveni also announced in the week of the election that he had ordered the blocking of Facebook in the country, days after the company took down fake accounts linked to his re-election campaign.
Voters headed to the polls last Thursday several months after the government introduced strict rules to curb the coronavirus pandemic. Internet connectivity has remained down across Uganda. These measures that have kept the confirmed caseload of coronavirus under 38,000, were allegedly used to crack down on critics and restrict political gatherings. The government equally ordered telecom companies to block access to social media platforms and online messaging applications.
The validity of the present election results is being contested, after many international and independent observers pulled out due to the lack of accreditation. There have also been reports of the failure of electronic voter identification systems, resulting from the internet shutdown.
This has lessons for Nigerian politicians. The last general elections witnessed an array of presidential candidates with impressive resumes in business and other chosen professions but zero experience in politics. Many Nigerians, rightly or wrongly, saw their presidential aspirations as showboating or attempts at public recognition to get appointments in the emergent government.
The most plausible route to the highest office in the land should be the aspiration for a lower leadership position. A prospective presidential candidate would then garner the relevant political leadership experience and build up some substantial grassroots following. People would have known what the man or woman intending to lead the country stands for, and he or she can then add tangible political value to their resume. Some people use the outgoing U.S. president, Donald Trump, as an example of a person who became president with zero political experience. However, the Trump story is an exception, rather than the norm. And the significant aberrations of his tumultuous four-year term as President of the United States (POTUS) can be traced to his being a political neophyte, lacking essential experience in administration and governance.
For Mr. Museveni, it is clear from his actions that African leaders refuse to learn from history. The continent has a record of previous sit-tight despots who ended up tragically, most times dragging the whole country down with them. The lame tactic of tagging political opponents as foreign agents funded by outsiders to destroy the country…no longer resonates.
Bobi Wine’s enormous political machinery galvanized a youth movement, like Nigeria’s #EndSARS protests of last year. Uganda has a relatively young population, with over 60 per cent born after Museveni assumed power. The youthful former reggae singer rode on the crest of the widespread resentment of teeming Ugandan youths in a country with a high unemployment and corruption rate, where more than 75 per cent of the population are under 30. The youths of Uganda wanted a government that would provide them with jobs. Most of them felt the Museveni government was out of touch with their needs, dreams, and aspirations, while Bobi Wine’s message of change and hope resonated with them.
According to the World Bank, around 700,000 Ugandans reach working age every year, but only 75,000 new jobs are available annually. Many are also frustrated by the corruption that has been rife in Mr. Museveni’s government for decades. They yearn for better infrastructure and improved public services, including better educational opportunities and affordable health care. Bobi Wine exploited these concerns and frustrations to create a youth-driven movement that many believed would have toppled the Ugandan despot’s rule if the election had been free and fair.
Bobi Wine’s effective use of the social media restates the potency of the platforms in social and political mobilization, especially in these days of the highly contagious coronavirus and the COVID-19 pandemic. Just as it propelled the Arab Spring and numerous nascent social uprisings, social media has become an albatross for dictators and those who engage in wanton misrule. The Uganda government’s resort to shutting down the internet and social media platforms is cowardly and draconian. It shows the extent autocrats would go in subverting the will of the people and perpetuating themselves in power.
For Mr. Museveni, it is clear from his actions that African leaders refuse to learn from history. The continent has a record of previous sit-tight despots who ended up tragically, most times dragging the whole country down with them. The lame tactic of tagging political opponents as foreign agents funded by outsiders to destroy the country or, in Uganda’s specific case, the president’s casting of himself as a bulwark against a return to the violence and political strife of the 1970s and ’80s no longer resonates. Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe learnt the lessons of the downside of autocratic sit-tight rule the hard way, spending the last days of his life in humiliation and ignominy. Muammar Gaddafi paid with his life, dragging his country down with him. Yoweri Museveni should be on the watch out.
There is possibly an indirect link between the recent events in the United States of America and the conduct of the presidential election in Uganda. The U.S., a former enabler of Mr. Museveni, recently witnessed an election whereby the president used all means within his reach to denigrate the electoral process and undermine America’s democracy. The effect on Uganda and Ugandans is that the United States, which usually acts like the ‘World’s Policeman’, often leading a coalition of countries to pressure autocratic governments to respect basic democratic tenets, became morally enfeebled to lecture anyone on democracy. During a recent CNN interview with Amanpour, the president’s gloating remarks underscore his attitude towards democracy and the U.S.’s role as the defender of democracy.
Dakuku Peterside is a policy and leadership expert.
First Published By Premium Times
