By Obed K Katureebe

THE latest expressions from the Uganda People’s Congress (UPC) newly elected supremo Dr Olara Otunnu cannot go without a response. I am alarmed by the statements made by Otunnu in his acceptance speech after he was elected UPC flag bearer on March 14, at Namboole Staduim.

Otunnu alleged that he is coming to liberate Ugandans from the ‘killer’ regime of President Yoweri Museveni that had, among other things, killed Rwandans when the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPA) chose to return home and liberate their country in 1990.

He goes on to accuse Museveni of having committed the Luwero massacre, the numerous killings in northern Uganda during the 21-year civil war against the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) and many more ridiculous accusations.

To begin with, it is not only fallacious but equally preposterous to state that Museveni exported war to Rwanda when all and sundry know that the 1990 Rwandan war was carried out by Rwandan exiles who had lived in Uganda for over 30 years with no hope of returning to their motherland.

President Museveni supported the Rwandans both morally and in other forms as they gathered their guts to liberate themselves. This, he has not done for the Rwandans alone; he did it for the Congolese when he removed the kleptocrat Mobutu, the South Sudanese while they were under the Arab threat and the South Africans while still under apartheid. In brief, President Museveni is a pan-Africanist who cannot sit inoperative while his fellow Africans face prejudice.

He did it for the Rwandans to finally return to their motherland. On the contrary, Otunnu and his mentor, Dr Milton Obote, had thought of annihilating them during the 1982 brutal displacements in the southern and western parts of Uganda.

The Otunnu of the time, with his colleagues Edward Rurangaranga and Chris Rwakasisi, brutally displaced and killed the Banyarwanda, both the refugees and the indigenous people and made them homeless during the years they were in Government. For Museveni to have given a hand to this cluster of people to finally return home is a gesticulation of true pan-Africanism.

And it is not Museveni alone who has participated in the liberation struggles to liberate countries that were not their own. Otunnu ought to know that Mwalimu Julius Nyerere committed his country’s resources and personnel to liberate Uganda when it was under siege of the brutal dictatorship of Idi Amin in 1979.

Zimbabwe, Tanzania and Mozambique committed their resources to the liberation of South Africa under the apartheid regime. The US and the UK have committed their resources to liberate Afghans and Iraqis. The US has, for 40 years, stood by the Israelis in the face of extremist Arab challenge.

Otunnu has further confused the few gullible journalists in this town that he has the US government in his pockets and that he is going to use his sway to reign them in and cause the regime change in Kampala. That is a naked lie.

Otunnu, for all the years he was in the US and in the UN, failed flatly to give the murderous Joseph Kony and his savage Lord’s Resistance Army a human face. Instead, Kony, was indicted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the US he claims is in his pocket went on to declare Kony a terrorist.

If Otunnu is so connected to the US government as he claims, why didn’t he use his influence to stop Kony from being declared a terrorist? Besides, Otunnu’s statements make Uganda look like a colonial district of the US. Uganda is a sovereign state; politicians ought to be reasonable enough to make us proud to be able to make rational decisions that will determine our destiny.

We feel insulted when senior politicians like Otunnu tell us how Americans are watching us. Gone are the days when the West was seen as the all-knowing. The Rwandan genocide of 1994 that happened in their face when they had all the means to avert it should be a good reminder of that outlived hoax that the West cares and will protect us. Had Rwanda’s Patriotic Army and the regional allies not taken the responsibility of ending the mass murder, probably the ethnic Tutsi community would be no more.

Ugandans are now mature enough and cannot be fed on politics of utopia. To tell them to begin violent methods so that Hillary Clinton can have something to report to the Congress is the biggest betrayal Otunnu can offer his country.

If you have policy issues where you can falter the NRM Government, why don’t you bring them up and sway the voters to vote you into power? Otunnu, many Ugandans have gone to school and know the basics of what a responsive Government can give. Besides, in the event of violence, as Otunnu wants it to happen, poor Ugandans will pay the ultimate price when the long hand of the law finally catches up with them.

Their instigator will have long landed back in New York. When the rogue regime of his friend, Basilio Okello, was overthrown in 1986, he had his passport and money with him to flee to the US. The ordinary Ugandans, who had supported his regime, remained to face the music.

Fellow Ugandans, let us not be hoodwinked by Otunnu to engage in violent acts because even before we realise it he will have acquired an Ivorian citizenship.
The writer works with the Uganda Media Centre