What is scratching Col Kiiza Besigye?

Twixt that indistinct zone where sleep gives way to morning, I had a vision. At Nabusanke on the Kampala - Masaka road, a man with a hammer and chisel was sweatily bent down pecking at the hard shoulder of the tarmac. A crowd had gathered. Most were laughing loudly. A woman turned to me and said, "He says he's moving the equator five inches to the north!" Indeed the spot was where the mysterious equator crosses the road, its world-wide length dividing the globe between north and south. The man himself was too busy to look up but I soon saw it was none other than Colonel (rtd) Kiiza Besigye. Earlier in the week he had announced his intention to stand against incumbent Y.K.Museveni for the presidency of Uganda. Besigye is clearly one man who sets himself Herculean tasks, to say the least; others might use more psychological terms. Ki ekimutakula?, as we say in Luganda? What is scratching him? Let us leave that briefly and turn to the man he is set on unseating. I was lucky enough to accompany the President on his State Visit to Ireland and what I witnessed was proof, if proof were needed (and perhaps it is, in the case of such as Col K) of what a great treasure we have in Our Man. The Irish are amongst the very warmest people on earth - I have said loudly that if I weren't Ugandan then make me Irish - but they are also nobody's fool. They and Museveni played each other like a fiddle, and at the end of it the admiration was warm and mutual. He knew their history had been, like ours, tainted by colonialism, and at the same hand. That like us they had been grossly poor, but for their part had undergone an economic miracle especially within the last decade. For their innate lyricism he aptly quoted W. B. Yeats, perhaps the greatest of their poets in modern times. He joked with them, teased them, smiled with them, but always to the same end: asking for their help to transform us (as they had been transformed) into a modern viable state; and not through so-called Aid. He thanked them for their Aid programmes; but said Aid was not enough and could even be a hindrance. What was needed were real trading opportunities, including partnerships and other investments, and, above all, an end to limiting tariffs and barriers of all kinds, usually imposed by the more wealthy on the more poor and therefore especially pernicious. He read from concisely argued speeches, breaking away to add a meaningful look here and a joke there, and then going seamlessly back to his text (which was always brief). This was vintage Museveni. The Irish heard him and loved him, and by extension his country. After the lecture at University College, Dublin, the Nigerian Ambassador to Ireland turned to me with wet eyes and said, "This great man has spoken for Africa!" Mine were not much drier. Museveni was moving in zones that, frankly, Besigye could only dream of; if he can dream. That is why Museveni was Besigye's leader in the bush and afterwards. And yet to hear Besigye's recent grandiloquent statements you would think it was the other way round. He has decided that Museveni is not the one to lead us forward. Instead we should have Besigye. It is risible. Why him? Because, as he said at his Press Conference, "I have also over the last 20 years offered the best that I could in this struggle." Verily no person can do better than their best, but was his best good enough? The electorate will decide; if, that is, this charade goes ahead. In any case that is a minor issue, even though, as pointed out by many including the President, Besigye has gone about it with typical clumsiness; for example by not first referring his intentions to the right Movement bodies. He talks of the President having "arrogant intransigence", and then goes on with arrogance beyond belief to abuse him in the most personal manner. It is highly doubtful whether Besigye appreciates the irony. He talks about what he calls the President's "personal and arbitrary rule which has undermined institutional development", that he "has openly practiced sectarianism, nepotism and discrimination and resisted all well-meaning criticism against these unjust and divisive practices". And much else besides: thankfully I don't have the space! But can this be all that Museveni means to Besigye? To change all this, "I have decided to offer myself as a candidate..." Wow! He talks about, "the first priority of my government." As he tolls them, his steps for improvement are pure Mickey Mouse, of the wave-a-wand variety. Everything is capable of the most simplistic solution. If this is what he believes after all his time, and at high level, in the Movement, then we do wrong to laugh at him; we should rather extend pity. No wonder the ADF salute him. Surely the President will not waste another word on him! Let's end in brighter country, where, if I can be allowed a small gloat, I have played a walk-on part (although I wont use this to run for President!) Midroc is about to take over the Sheraton Hotel. I wager anybody that by this simple fact a great deal of inward investment will follow in Uganda. Don't tell Besigye! Ends.