Entebbe UN centre: The fading power of FDC

By Ambassador Henry Mayega

UN CENTRE BENEFITS ALL UGANDANS- A daily of May 15, 2018 carried a story titled: "FDC backs plan to relocate UN centre to Kenya" in which FDC's Ibrahim Nganda is said to have argued that because of the "prevailing economic problems it would make the Yoweri Museveni administration wake up." 

Well, President Yoweri Museveni remains the greatest captain in Uganda's history because of his tireless energies to redeem and maintain his country's image.

First, the FDC through their illiberal spokesperson do not get it right because of the obsession they have with running against common sense resident in the popular view. The centre, for instance is said to employ 427 people, a majority of whom are Ugandans being afforded descent incomes.  

Besides, Entebbe Municipality's micro-economy is said to be benefitting from the centre's spenders the very reason why residents of the municipality petitioned President Yoweri Museveni over the matter. Such brooding as Nganda's, therefore, is not only misplaced, but nefarious as well. 

And when you find some in the recessing opposition entertaining the crap of relocating the centre to Kenya, when the cords which bind us as Ugandans in one common union are too far numerous and powerful to the extent that all of us fought off a most unpopular UN decision, such malcontents and hair-brained dregs must be despised by Uganda's voter.

Secondly, the fractious and indolent opposition won't agree: the location of the centre in Entebbe, was, is and shall always be a vote of confidence in our systems, stability as well as our influence in the region because of Yoweri Museveni's vivid testament that he came to serve Uganda, the region and the African continent.  Let the indolent, the opposition, point a finger to any African country that has taken in millions of refugees like Yoweri Museveni's administered Uganda.  

In the near past, the political colossus with clay feet, Kizza Besigye, miserably argued that the regional refugee problem was an off-shoot of Yoweri Museveni. Really?  

Take the case of the Rwandese who ran to Uganda as far back as the 1950's or the Somalis who ran away from the Horn of Africa after the fall of Siad Barry well before Yoweri Museveni joined Uganda's political canvass, were these exoduses the latter's creation? 

The Sudan problem is similarly explained; has Kizza Besigye heard about Anyanya I and II?  These were hot-bath areas of conflict that pre-date Yoweri Museveni's inhabitation of Uganda's political canvass. 

Thirdly, the location of the UN centre in Entebbe was a vindication of our robust foreign policy which seeks to make friends and to promote World peace and order. The Yoweri Museveni administration does not compromise on those, most especially when it comes to Pan- Africanism (African solutions to African problems).

Incantations from a fissiparous opposition won't reverse this.  But we can understand their pangs after losing a string of elections: 1996, 2001, 2006, 2011 and 2016, all of them lost to our fresh and elegant portrait of a hero, showing that Yoweri Museveni leadership style has always filled and crowded the hearts of Ugandan voters.

Fourth, it would appear that the opposition's negative stance on the location of the center in Entebbe depicts them as people with no thread of sympathy towards those in gainful employment at the facility which inexorably makes the objectors unable to navigate Uganda's political rapids to a win at polls.

It is only the myopic who would wish away such a center and by Ibrahim Nganda sizing his FDC against such an important facility, the social political gulf that divides the voter and the opposition pack widens the more.

The location of the center unknown to many was a sign of honor from the international community to Uganda which had taken itself out of the international files of honor in the 1970s and part of the 1980s due to incessant wars that wrought instability on us. Why wasn't the location to Entebbe done in the 1970s or 1980s?

That is why we should never lend ourselves directly or indirectly to the shibboleth and shenanigans of some in our mist who berate Yoweri Museveni's epochal achievements. 

Lastly, that centre benefits Uganda with security co-ordination, intelligence sharing with regional peace-keeping missions in the DRC whose eastern side largely suffers from lack of effective government, the CAR, South Sudan as well as Somalia, unknown to some who lack in security adroitness.

The writer is the Deputy Head of Mission of the Uganda Embassy in Beijing, China