Opposition scares
Sep 30, 2004
Run, Ugandans, run! There can be no better advice to give fellow citizens in the face of the scary scenario the so called opposition is presenting if it came to power.
Run, Ugandans, run! There can be no better advice to give fellow citizens in the face of the scary scenario the so called opposition is presenting if it came to power. Watching the circus in the Democratic Party (DP), Uganda Peoples Congress (UPC), the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) and others not worth the ink, sends a chill down the spine.
You do not have to be “eating†like could be said of your esteemed columnist, to be dead scared to imagine anyone from the now opposition crowd at State House as the chief occupant. The only consolation is that we are watching the turbulent opposition waters from the safety of dry ground, nursed by President Yoweri Museveni and the National Resistance Movement (NRM). It is like walking by caged lions in a zoo-safe in the knowledge that the key is in safe hands.
For the uninitiated, I am taking the long route. The short of it is that for the past 18 years-coming to 19, our political opposition had been crying wolf. The opposition has been squealing about the well-intentioned provisions in the constitution, which forbid divisive multi-party elections.
With the passing of legislation paving way for political party competition, the Political Organisation Act and a couple of supportive court judgements, one would think the old parties and their off-shoots would instantly leap into action and shame the NRM.
The DP in particular, 50 in the running, had prided itself as the most democratic party, but always having power snatched from its jaws. Listening to DP pontificators in the pre-POA era gave one the impression that once they got a chance to organise, they would show us democracy made in heaven.
But alas, the façade of DP’s democracy is now there for all to see. The party is giving its clenched fist symbol-supposedly for strength-a truly twisted meaning.
After years of heaping unfair blame on the Movement as an undemocratic monster, the DP has failed to demonstrate an iota of democracy in its ranks. The small issue causing the party internal bleeding is whether to register or not. Ex-convict and Kampala mayor, Hajji Nasser Sebaggala, leads the pro-registration faction, while defacto-life-party leader, Dr. Paul Kawanga Ssemogerere, controls the anti-registration wing. True democracy, the type DP purports to champion, allows this kind of disagreement. It, however, also dictates that the protagonists must decide the party’s stand via a democratic vote, preferably secret ballot.
Instead, the DP big wigs have chosen name-calling as their democratic mode of resolving the disagreement. The Ssemogerere faction is busy reminding us about Ssebaggala’s bichupuli (fake) degree, while the hajji in turn is proclaiming to all how politically barren Ssemogerere is!
With people aspiring for power exhibiting such gross incompetence and intolerance, thank God they are washing their dirty linen outside State House. If they got to power, it is a fair bet that the linen, including yours, would be bloodstained.
Meanwhile, from the UPC corner, we are being treated to that party’s typical theatre of the absurd. None other than the party’s president-until the grave do us part,
Dr. Apollo Milton Obote, is playing the lead role.
Since President Museveni romped to power in 1986, Obote, holed up in Lusaka, Zambia, had been endlessly blubbering that he would not touch “the dictatorship†with a long stick.
In a desperate attempt to deny the Movement democracy legitimacy, he harangued some UPC adherents not to run for office under the popular no-party democracy. The end result was his falling out with the likes of Lira Municipality’s MP Cecilia Ogwal, who clearly found the no-party democracy a salt lick. Now Obote realising that his dinosaur status in Ugandan politics is for real has made a U-tun.
In a September 27, article in The New Vision, could Yoweri Museveni write in The Uganda Times during UPC 11? -Obote totally contradicted his usual self.
“In 1997, Parliament made amendments to the electoral law and the restrictions against opposition parties have been relaxed,†Mujeeyi Obote wrote. Dr. James Rwanyarare, did you read the article? Rwanyarare is the chairman of Obote’s Presidential Policy Commission. He makes a living out of the most warped denunciations of the Movement democracy.
Of course, knowing the UPC that twice scurried out of State House without its shirt on, the party and its serial blundering leader, are staying true to character. They deserve no better place than the relics’ shelf.
Then not to be outdone in being unserious, the FDC, a mutant of estranged NRM fat cats, has fast signed on. What worse way to start than spending months vacillating on the legitimacy of political parties registering, then turning around belatedly to say the Government is blocking you? As Chinua Achebe wrote: “A chick that grows into a cock is known from the day it hatches.†The FDC is surely no cock to crow.
Ends
You do not have to be “eating†like could be said of your esteemed columnist, to be dead scared to imagine anyone from the now opposition crowd at State House as the chief occupant. The only consolation is that we are watching the turbulent opposition waters from the safety of dry ground, nursed by President Yoweri Museveni and the National Resistance Movement (NRM). It is like walking by caged lions in a zoo-safe in the knowledge that the key is in safe hands.
For the uninitiated, I am taking the long route. The short of it is that for the past 18 years-coming to 19, our political opposition had been crying wolf. The opposition has been squealing about the well-intentioned provisions in the constitution, which forbid divisive multi-party elections.
With the passing of legislation paving way for political party competition, the Political Organisation Act and a couple of supportive court judgements, one would think the old parties and their off-shoots would instantly leap into action and shame the NRM.
The DP in particular, 50 in the running, had prided itself as the most democratic party, but always having power snatched from its jaws. Listening to DP pontificators in the pre-POA era gave one the impression that once they got a chance to organise, they would show us democracy made in heaven.
But alas, the façade of DP’s democracy is now there for all to see. The party is giving its clenched fist symbol-supposedly for strength-a truly twisted meaning.
After years of heaping unfair blame on the Movement as an undemocratic monster, the DP has failed to demonstrate an iota of democracy in its ranks. The small issue causing the party internal bleeding is whether to register or not. Ex-convict and Kampala mayor, Hajji Nasser Sebaggala, leads the pro-registration faction, while defacto-life-party leader, Dr. Paul Kawanga Ssemogerere, controls the anti-registration wing. True democracy, the type DP purports to champion, allows this kind of disagreement. It, however, also dictates that the protagonists must decide the party’s stand via a democratic vote, preferably secret ballot.
Instead, the DP big wigs have chosen name-calling as their democratic mode of resolving the disagreement. The Ssemogerere faction is busy reminding us about Ssebaggala’s bichupuli (fake) degree, while the hajji in turn is proclaiming to all how politically barren Ssemogerere is!
With people aspiring for power exhibiting such gross incompetence and intolerance, thank God they are washing their dirty linen outside State House. If they got to power, it is a fair bet that the linen, including yours, would be bloodstained.
Meanwhile, from the UPC corner, we are being treated to that party’s typical theatre of the absurd. None other than the party’s president-until the grave do us part,
Dr. Apollo Milton Obote, is playing the lead role.
Since President Museveni romped to power in 1986, Obote, holed up in Lusaka, Zambia, had been endlessly blubbering that he would not touch “the dictatorship†with a long stick.
In a desperate attempt to deny the Movement democracy legitimacy, he harangued some UPC adherents not to run for office under the popular no-party democracy. The end result was his falling out with the likes of Lira Municipality’s MP Cecilia Ogwal, who clearly found the no-party democracy a salt lick. Now Obote realising that his dinosaur status in Ugandan politics is for real has made a U-tun.
In a September 27, article in The New Vision, could Yoweri Museveni write in The Uganda Times during UPC 11? -Obote totally contradicted his usual self.
“In 1997, Parliament made amendments to the electoral law and the restrictions against opposition parties have been relaxed,†Mujeeyi Obote wrote. Dr. James Rwanyarare, did you read the article? Rwanyarare is the chairman of Obote’s Presidential Policy Commission. He makes a living out of the most warped denunciations of the Movement democracy.
Of course, knowing the UPC that twice scurried out of State House without its shirt on, the party and its serial blundering leader, are staying true to character. They deserve no better place than the relics’ shelf.
Then not to be outdone in being unserious, the FDC, a mutant of estranged NRM fat cats, has fast signed on. What worse way to start than spending months vacillating on the legitimacy of political parties registering, then turning around belatedly to say the Government is blocking you? As Chinua Achebe wrote: “A chick that grows into a cock is known from the day it hatches.†The FDC is surely no cock to crow.
Ends