Discuss ideas, not tribes

PRESIDENT MUSEVENI told the people of Busia last weekend that the nationality of presidential candidate Aggrey Awori should not be an issue. He said it was irrelevant that Awori's brother had been a minister in the Kenya government. Museveni said that he believed that the borders between Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania should be abolished. This is the right position. The borders of Africa are artificial. They were largely created in the imperial carve-up of Africa at the Berlin Conference of 1884. That is why Samia live on both sides of the border. There has been a tragic tendency in Africa for those in power to try and exclude competitors by claiming that they were foreigners. We saw this with President Chiluba's disgraceful attempt to remove Zambian nationality from former president Kenneth Kaunda. While it was true that Kaunda's father originally came to Zambia from Malawi, this did not invalidate his nationality under Zambian law. Chiluba was moving the goalposts when he tried to introduce retrospective legislation to strip Kaunda of his citizenship. More recently General Gouei of Ivory Coast tried to stop his main rival Alasane Ouattara from standing in last month's presidential elections on the grounds that he was a foreigner. The consequent absence of Ouattara's party was a large contributing factor to the violence that erupted in Ivory Coast. The presidential elections in Uganda are now just four months away. There are many important issues that need to be presented and debated before the electorate. We should not get bogged down on an individual candidate's tribe or nationality. The important issue should be a candidate's ideas for developing Uganda. That is what we should discuss. Ends.