For shame, ex-president!

By John NagendaTOWARDS the end of the week, Uganda received a blast from its ex-President Godfrey Lukongwa Binaisa, whose less-than-a-year term ended way back in May 1980. Binaisa was threatening to take the Uganda government to court on several counts, as we shall see. I count myself among the good friends of this 82-year old gentleman, whose escapades, in office and outside, have always been cause for much merriment. I would go further. Like him or not, Mr Binaisa suffers from terminal unseriousness. Even the way he got the presidency was a high comedy. He had gone to my brother Stephen’s travel company, UTCO, to be advanced a ticket back to his lonely exile in the United States. Meantime a gang of men, amongst them the late arch-conspirator Mukombe Mpambara, were looking for someone, anyone, upon whom to fix the presidency forcibly taken from the late Professor Lule. The latter’s reign had lasted a mere 68 days. Since the professor was himself 68 years of age, the incident led to the ex-president Obote witticism: “Hmm, Prof Lule, 68, ousted after 68 days! What a scenario!” And indeed it was. As Mpambara recounted it to me some years later, Binaisa’s name came up in part by ‘B’ being close to the beginning of the alphabet. The question was where to find him. They ran him to ground at UTCO, just as my brother was issuing the ticket. It took some time to convince the dumbfounded Binaisa that the conspirators were not pulling his leg. Another few hours and they would have needed another stooge; what’s more Binaisa would not now be taking Uganda to court for “the criminal act of violently removing me” from office, and for “the refusal to make full payment of my benefits and entitlements”, etc, etc. The government that ousted him is long gone. The one that returned him, and is paying him handsomely, is the one he is suing. In Luganda we say, “Gwowonya eggere yalikusambya!” “The one whose infected foot you cure is the one who kicks you with it!” This is precisely what the former president is doing. There is another thing. In his self-imposed exile after he had been booted out he joined groups of desperate people trying to bring down the Movement government of Uganda. On August 1, 1997, I wrote: “… in Montreal he had said, ‘Thousands of people are being killed everyday… because they are Hutu and do not belong to the aristocratic Hima and Tutsi who rule the area as of ‘Divine Right’, Elsewhere he had said that the patron of all this is Museveni.” Being Binaisa he probably thought all this was a bit of a giggle. It was not, especially from the lips of an ex president, however bizarrely chosen. Despite this he was able to return, indeed had never been stopped from returning, and no charges have been instituted against him. In fact he is a ubiquitous attender of every party or festivity going. And the government he so much abused while outside its soil, pays him handsome emoluments. What ails the old gent? Too much time on his hands? He should also never forget that as far back as 1967 he was the author of the infamous and draconian “pigeon hole” Constitution which his master Obote forced on the luckless Ugandan people. I would say the genial elder is going a joke too far if he persists with his nonsense of suing the government which feeds him. Perhaps we should counter-sue him without mercy, or better still laugh at him constantly and in unison until he comes to his senses. But will he? It’s not a given! * * *Which brings me to a nice story sent to me this week; stop me if you have heard it before. A stricken light aircraft had five passengers but only four parachutes. The first person stepped forward and convinced the others it was imperative he should take a parachute. So did the second. Then up stepped George W Bush, pointing out he was American president, and indeed the cleverest to date. What could they say? He took his package and went. That left the Pope and a girl of ten, to whom he offered the parachute. “No need,” said she, “we have two parachutes, the president took my schoolbag.” It was tempting to substitute Binaisa in the role of Bush! Incidentally this week more or less saw the total demolition of a man who brought some honour to Bush’s cabinet. Secretary of State, and retired four-star general, Colin Powell, was forced into the abject position of disowning “Chairman” Yasser Arafat as the elected leader of Palestine. Hitherto, all along, he had insisted, as all civilised people, that it was up to the Palestinians to choose their own leadership. It was horrible to watch when he abjectly renounced, in the worst Stalinist fashion, the views he had held before. Why does he not follow what a previous Secretary of State, and general, did? Twenty years before, Alexander Haig resigned his great office because he had found it of little substance in practice; proving that he was not just the man who uttered the words, “I am in charge here”, when Reagan was immobilised by a shot to the jaw in 1981. Gen. Powell, the most “presidential” of this US cabinet, would undoubtedly change the history of America, and its present direction, if he resigned now. The question is, Does he still have the guts?