Elections: the dust biters!
Mar 03, 2006
UGANDA’S No1 COLUMNIST.. INFORMED, CONTROVERSIAL AND PROVOCATIVE<br><b>John Nagenda</b><br><br>I should be frothing over with excitement about the elections, especially the presidential ones, and indeed I am. But as to writing I will take it easy, a dish at a time, the more so since revenge is
UGANDA’S No1 COLUMNIST.. INFORMED, CONTROVERSIAL AND PROVOCATIVE
John Nagenda
I should be frothing over with excitement about the elections, especially the presidential ones, and indeed I am. But as to writing I will take it easy, a dish at a time, the more so since revenge is a dish best served cold!
Revenge against whom? Those usual suspects, our Temporary Visitors, who staked everything, including their reputations, on Museveni’s downfall. Well, they lost and are now busy changing their tune in current communications to their bosses. You know how badly it hurts by their present muteness. It is their problem if they fell over the edge of what is expected in these circumstances.
Regardless, the Ugandan voter reminded them who is Boss: the Voter. But this message was not only for our over-heated guests. It was also delivered to the 100 MPs whose massacre by vote had the hallmarks of an electorate thirsting for revenge, with the MPs crashing like ninepins across the land. But, as the President said in his first news conference after reconfirmation in the job, there’s democracy for you!
One thing is certain: no candidate will take the electorate lightly again in a hurry. That was a timely plus. Government also, which is picked mainly from elected MPs, would have cocked an ear. But here it was more complicated, for it had itself gifted many percentage points to Kizza Besigye. By making him appear a victim through the courts prior to the elections, it gave him undeserved prominence. This probably bequeathed him 10 points. Remove these and he goes back to the 27% of 2001. Museveni by the same points shoots up to the 70% of that election; prophetic of those who wanted Besigye back on the street pronto!
Although we hotly await the return of the meaty treason case (forget the “rape†and “primary paper certificate†ones), might Besigye flee again beforehand, as also his Mrs in her serious case of maligning the President and the two senior judges of bribery? Hopefully the nightmare of the General Court Martial re-entering the scene will quietly evaporate!
***
A few vignettes of the elections, starting off with “the whiter shade of pale†(what a lovely song of the ‘60s!) races. I will not easily forget the pompous chief of the EU observers exceeding his brief by giving uninvited advice to Ugandans. That they should return to two-year presidential term limits, and that the playing field had not been level because Besigye had been taken to court. What do you do with a treason case (treason, mark you)? The chief’s job had strictly been to report on how the voting went.
Compare and contrast him with the intentionally understated Commonwealth team chief, ex President Ketumile Masire of Botswana. He praised the exercise as largely free and fair. It would be very wrong on this brief comparison to form an enduring view of the inherent fairness, or otherwise, of the white and black races – besides, the American Charge d’Affaires, for one, had shared Masire’s view. Another EU observer has called them the best in Africa and the Americas. But regarding what colonialism, and its patronising behaviour, had brought about, that is a different story.
Next on this noxious sub-plot, I bring you Richard Dowden, so-called old hand on Uganda. How he has receded, but not in title! He is Director (or perhaps even Director General) of the Royal African Society, an august body. They should shove him overboard. He was travelling to Uganda in the guise of a writer on the elections for The Observer of London – not all that long ago one of the leading publications of the world. Have they sunk so low as to publish Dowden’s un-researched gossip? As T S Eliot lamented in The Waste Land, talking of a corpse: “Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s a friend to men,/Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again!â€
Dowden’s article showed much salacious interest in Museveni’s private affairs, told him by Mrs Besigye, who is threatening to expose the identity of “several love children fathered, but now neglected, by Museveni.†The gullible Dowden writes it down as fact! And un-researched cliches abound “…the Police prevent opposition rallies, the courts are overruled in cases against his allies… (Museveni) is grooming his son to be his successor.â€
He says, “almost all the Kampala elite will vote for Besigye.†They didn’t. Where had Dowden, in his couple of days, met “all the elite� This is a man to be “cut†by all decent folk whenever espied; doors to be slammed in his face.
But Uganda shall survive all such, including an A. Blair of the Telegraph, judging by his photo a serial killer of steak and kidney pie! He attacked me in his blog for pointing out the obvious: that the Northern voters had en masse refused to vote for Museveni. But I insisted that, as usual, and rightly, President Museveni would continue to treat these voters with fairness, as Ugandans.
This Blair while in Iraq concocted stories about British MP Galloway, who sued the paper and won heavily. Was Blair sent back to Africa as punishment? I have a message for him. Not to bother, in his weak, lisping tones, to try and see Museveni while I am still around!
Apologies to my readers that I have wasted so much space on these low-lifers, but they represent a type. It is a function of canines that if they find standing structures they lift a leg and wet them. How I have loved pointing this out! Back to serious business next week.
John Nagenda
I should be frothing over with excitement about the elections, especially the presidential ones, and indeed I am. But as to writing I will take it easy, a dish at a time, the more so since revenge is a dish best served cold!
Revenge against whom? Those usual suspects, our Temporary Visitors, who staked everything, including their reputations, on Museveni’s downfall. Well, they lost and are now busy changing their tune in current communications to their bosses. You know how badly it hurts by their present muteness. It is their problem if they fell over the edge of what is expected in these circumstances.
Regardless, the Ugandan voter reminded them who is Boss: the Voter. But this message was not only for our over-heated guests. It was also delivered to the 100 MPs whose massacre by vote had the hallmarks of an electorate thirsting for revenge, with the MPs crashing like ninepins across the land. But, as the President said in his first news conference after reconfirmation in the job, there’s democracy for you!
One thing is certain: no candidate will take the electorate lightly again in a hurry. That was a timely plus. Government also, which is picked mainly from elected MPs, would have cocked an ear. But here it was more complicated, for it had itself gifted many percentage points to Kizza Besigye. By making him appear a victim through the courts prior to the elections, it gave him undeserved prominence. This probably bequeathed him 10 points. Remove these and he goes back to the 27% of 2001. Museveni by the same points shoots up to the 70% of that election; prophetic of those who wanted Besigye back on the street pronto!
Although we hotly await the return of the meaty treason case (forget the “rape†and “primary paper certificate†ones), might Besigye flee again beforehand, as also his Mrs in her serious case of maligning the President and the two senior judges of bribery? Hopefully the nightmare of the General Court Martial re-entering the scene will quietly evaporate!
***
A few vignettes of the elections, starting off with “the whiter shade of pale†(what a lovely song of the ‘60s!) races. I will not easily forget the pompous chief of the EU observers exceeding his brief by giving uninvited advice to Ugandans. That they should return to two-year presidential term limits, and that the playing field had not been level because Besigye had been taken to court. What do you do with a treason case (treason, mark you)? The chief’s job had strictly been to report on how the voting went.
Compare and contrast him with the intentionally understated Commonwealth team chief, ex President Ketumile Masire of Botswana. He praised the exercise as largely free and fair. It would be very wrong on this brief comparison to form an enduring view of the inherent fairness, or otherwise, of the white and black races – besides, the American Charge d’Affaires, for one, had shared Masire’s view. Another EU observer has called them the best in Africa and the Americas. But regarding what colonialism, and its patronising behaviour, had brought about, that is a different story.
Next on this noxious sub-plot, I bring you Richard Dowden, so-called old hand on Uganda. How he has receded, but not in title! He is Director (or perhaps even Director General) of the Royal African Society, an august body. They should shove him overboard. He was travelling to Uganda in the guise of a writer on the elections for The Observer of London – not all that long ago one of the leading publications of the world. Have they sunk so low as to publish Dowden’s un-researched gossip? As T S Eliot lamented in The Waste Land, talking of a corpse: “Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s a friend to men,/Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again!â€
Dowden’s article showed much salacious interest in Museveni’s private affairs, told him by Mrs Besigye, who is threatening to expose the identity of “several love children fathered, but now neglected, by Museveni.†The gullible Dowden writes it down as fact! And un-researched cliches abound “…the Police prevent opposition rallies, the courts are overruled in cases against his allies… (Museveni) is grooming his son to be his successor.â€
He says, “almost all the Kampala elite will vote for Besigye.†They didn’t. Where had Dowden, in his couple of days, met “all the elite� This is a man to be “cut†by all decent folk whenever espied; doors to be slammed in his face.
But Uganda shall survive all such, including an A. Blair of the Telegraph, judging by his photo a serial killer of steak and kidney pie! He attacked me in his blog for pointing out the obvious: that the Northern voters had en masse refused to vote for Museveni. But I insisted that, as usual, and rightly, President Museveni would continue to treat these voters with fairness, as Ugandans.
This Blair while in Iraq concocted stories about British MP Galloway, who sued the paper and won heavily. Was Blair sent back to Africa as punishment? I have a message for him. Not to bother, in his weak, lisping tones, to try and see Museveni while I am still around!
Apologies to my readers that I have wasted so much space on these low-lifers, but they represent a type. It is a function of canines that if they find standing structures they lift a leg and wet them. How I have loved pointing this out! Back to serious business next week.