In daddy's footsteps

SATURDAY January 20, 2001 will remain an historic day in the lives of millions in three different parts of the world. Three leaders took the reins of power in countries as disparate in culture as in profile. In the United States, George W. Bush was inaugurated as 43rd president, while in the Philippines, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo swore in as new president. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, meanwhile, Maj. Gen. Joseph Kabila consolidated his new hold on power with a series of meetings with diplomats. By a strange quirk of fate, all three are children of former leaders. Interestingly again, none of them is a hereditary leader in the classic monarchical sense. Bush Jr. is the son of America's 41st president, George Herbert Walker Bush. Mrs. Arroyo, who has been Vice President, is daughter to the late Diosdado Macapagal, Philippine president from 1961 to 1965. Gen. Kabila is son to Congo's last leader, Laurent Desire Kabila. The nature of the accession of these individuals is largely reflective of the fortunes of their respective countries. Bush won a peaceful, albeit bitterly contested, election. His accession was part of a democratic process, long rooted in US culture. At the extreme end, Kabila succeeded his father who was assassinated last week, almost in keeping with the Congo's violent history. Arroyo's accession took the middle road, when her democratically elected predecessor was pushed out by people power for failing to live up to democratic ideals. Hers was the second people power accession in a country that has swung wildly from dictatorship to democracy, while tittering on the brink of anarchy, in a short 15 years. Thankfully for Uganda, we are consolidating the best of the above scenarios, choosing our leaders by universal adult suffrage, the most democratic means possible. Ends