BY GEORGE LAGHU

Though the Electoral Commission has banned crowds at nomination venues, the politics of crowds will never be ruled out.

Crowds showbiz are a contagion to Ugandan journalism and politics. Little wonder that the success or failure of a function is gauged by the size of the crowd.

In 2001, the bustling crowd that turned up at Kololo Airstrip to witness President Museveni’s nomination made news for weeks.

The opposition waxed themselves hoarse claiming people were bussed from upcountry.

The crowd at the return of Dr. Kizza Besigye seems to be the greatest thing that ever happened to FDC. In anticipation of large crowds at their rallies, FDC has designed a special truck with a high rise platform seen on commercial promotion trucks.

NRM’S chief mobiliser, Capt Mike Mukula, in an effort to show his party’s power to mobilise crowds, organised a one-million march. On that same day, the Buganda elders marched from Kabaka’s office to Parliament in protest of an elected Katikiro.

The factor of crowds in Uganda’s unfolding political metamorphosis went a notch higher recently, when five minutes of valuable BBC airtime went to waste. The London-based promoter of FDC and Senior Presidential adviser John Nagenda debated whether Dr. Besigye attracted large crowds.

Kampala crowds are so unpredictable. The city can flood with people over issues ranging from mere frivolities to monumental occurrences.

In carnival atmosphere charged with emotions, the Kampala crowds are mainly a fabrication of city goons who look at the law as their main impediment to their happiness. Their immediate satisfaction from the excitement of the moment is to take advantage of any opportunity to loot.

Blindfolded in the search for crowds, political parties are failing to address public controversies such as security, peace, development, employment of local administration, corruption and regional integration to peripheral issues of merely removing an incumbent or maintaining the status quo. BBC’s infection not withstanding, the crowd fever has attacked and consumed all valuable space on the face of Ugandan newspapers with long footages on the television screens.

To the politicians, the crowd, no matter its composition has become a political barometer or call it a ‘politicometer’ to see how they gain mileage over their opponents. It is time Ugandan journalists and politicians identified the difference between the crowd and the public because crowds don’t make a public and the public is not necessarily a crowd.

The encyclopedia of contemporary English language describes the public as a community of people among whom a controversy arises. The public are the people who take part in that controversy and seek to find solutions to them as the affected people. On the other hand, the crowd is a gathering of people who come together mainly to attain a cause or get sentimental fulfillment or self-aggrandisement. The way a crowd behaves is different from a public because the former’s orientation is towards an emotional excitement as the latter goes for reason and consensus.

Today’s publics are large and impersonal involving people unknown to each other. Being mobilised by agents of the media, books, schools, modern information technologies and word of mouth, modern publics are powerful as they take the back seat. Nazi commander, Adolf Hitler once said of crowds. “The intelligence of the masses is small. Their forgetfulness is great. They must be told the same thing a thousand times”.

For any journalist or politician to regard the emotional sentiment of a crowd as a public opinion and endorsement is to miss the point.

Political opinions belong more to the public than the crowd and the public is not made of crowds.

Where politicians and more especially the president is concerned, journalists have an obligation to inform and educate the people whether the president is having a public or political rally.

Public rallies should interest everyone irrespective of political lineages as matter of the public such as health, security and finance cuts across party affiliations. Political rallies may interest only party members as they strategise on how to influence public opinion. As Fr Augustine Okello of Gulu Archdiocese observes, “While sentimentalism is unavoidable in political propaganda, it should be observed that democracy as an ideal is government by an enlightened public opinion.”