Mengo is safest with NRM in power

Feb 22, 2006

Why can’t the new leadership in Mengo recall that it was President Museveni who initiated and saw through the return of ebyaffe?

By Tarsis Kabwegyere
Why can’t the new leadership in Mengo recall that it was President Museveni who initiated and saw through the return of ebyaffe?

I vividly recall how difficult it was for him to convince the NRC that kingship should return to Uganda and Buganda in particular. How can anyone forget the reaction of many people in the media and elsewhere to the idea of the return of kings! Thanks to Prof. Apolo Nsibambi who led the ebyaffe negotiations. It needed professional guidance and of a political scientist indeed.

Who can forget Besweri Mulondo’s speech in the CA of “the snake in the pot”? That historic speech cost him the title of Sabalangira. In that CA an idea had surfaced that UPC would ally with Mengo and other opportunistic forces to capture the constitutional framework and ascend to power. Mulondo saved the pot but it seems we didn’t kill the snake!

The CA bent backwards and deemed Buganda to have a charter. Mengo saw this as the dimming of federo! The districts were to participate in operationalising the charter. Mengo went against the decentralisation current and the charter was dimmed out of its constitutional existence, apparently oblivious to rise of the people’s popular will, call it democracy!

The British appeared to be allies of Mengo in colonising Uganda when in fact they were undermining the Mengo establishment, Obote knelt to the Kabaka and an the disastrous UPC-KY alliance was made. Miria Obote has repeated it with impunity. Others have lined up! I have been out of town to know what independent Bwanika has promised! He probably will recommend the independence of Buganda!

It is simply amazing for any leader in Uganda to appear not to know that the NRM revolution was born and nurtured in the womb of Buganda. It appears to me to be unbearable that some leaders can ignore a constitutional framework twice, a framework painstakingly arrived at through legal processes, and think that he is protecting the interests of his group! I find it historically surprising that anybody can ignore the fact that the last 20 years have been Mengo’s best time since independence. Constitutional clarity is the only guarantee of kingship. Political deception cannot. I am convinced that the Constitution is more important that the whims of political parties and the deception that accompanies vote searching!

Constitutionalisation is more reliable than individual promises during campaigns. Mengo is safest with NRM in power because it has entrenched traditional authority in the Constitution.
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