Mudslinging is a normal aspect of campaigning

Jan 19, 2006

THE NRM presidential candidate, Yoweri Kaguta Museveni has hit the eastern election campaign route with a bang, flushing out the numerous lies the combined opposition had been planting earlier. It is a chase game, the opposition did not know their trail had been mapped, and now, no heap of lies will

Ofwono Opondo

THE NRM presidential candidate, Yoweri Kaguta Museveni has hit the eastern election campaign route with a bang, flushing out the numerous lies the combined opposition had been planting earlier. It is a chase game, the opposition did not know their trail had been mapped, and now, no heap of lies will be left unattended to for long.

According to FDC leaders who were in government until two years ago, “For the last 20 years that president Museveni has been in power, the warriors have been and are still terrorising you. They kill people and raid cattle. This rampage of the Karimojong on you is a deliberate policy of this government to ruin you. When we take over, this thuggery will end, and you will regain your glory of the seventies and early eighties,” Dr Kizza Besigye campaigning in Teso region. Hopefully this was the “policy,” when both he and Gen. Mugisha Muntu were NPC and army commander respectively for so long when rustling and rebellion were at their highest!

Besigye’s voiceover if played on screen could easily show Museveni and UPDF chief Gen. Aronda Nyakairima distributing guns to the warriors, or UPDF standing by watching as the rampage goes on.
Tomorrow, Besigye and Muntu might say, “Our opponent and devil Museveni will come into your home, shoot and rob you.” Fortunately, this is an old lie, which Ugandans will shrug off as before.

Although malaria, AIDS, and reckless driving kill far more people than the rustlers, Besigye does not mention them in his campaign speeches. In this campaign there is both good and bad news to report, and candidate Museveni has firmly said, “Report all of it, and be truthful. Just be sure to put the bad news in the text and the good news in the pictures.” That leaves NRM opponents with nothing to protest or deny, and NRM not be associated with a distasteful image. We are driving through such a storm of slurs, innuendos, lies, and insults to our intelligence from people asking for the reins of our public life.

Some commentators are bemoaning how nasty and diversionary politics has become, and wonder plaintively why no candidate “takes the high road” on policy and moral issues. They berate voters for obsessing over musty sex scandals when they could be discussing the important economic policies in the various manifestos on wealth creation.

Somehow, virtually all pundits will agree, that this election will be nastier than the last, they say, which was nastier than the one before, and so on back to a golden age of dignified democracy when politicians spoke like Shakespeare. Well, Uganda, I hate to break the news, but that golden age never existed. What ‘good old days’? The last Ugandan politician who won the presidency without attacking his opponent was QC Godfrey Binaisa in May 1980 because he was just brought in by the assumed victors.

In the US, George Washington also never attacked opponents because he ran unopposed, but as soon as Washington stepped down, America jumped into a hog-waller and began mud- wrestling.

The first post-Washington presidential election between Thomas Jefferson and John Adams had a valid philosophical disagreement of profound consequence to America. Jefferson favoured a small, unobtrusive government controlled by common citizens, while Adams wanted a powerful government of educated elite. Mudslingers associated with Adams accused Jefferson of being a bloodthirsty atheist because he admired the French Revolution and a coward who avoided military service during the Civil War.

While Jefferson proclaimed himself champion of the common citizen, pro-Adams papers said he represented “cut-throats who walk in rags and sleep amidst filth and vermin”. And much like today’s Uganda, Adams was accused of planning to cancel the Constitution, crown himself king, and anoint his son heir to a new American throne.

Even personal attacks were invited as Jefferson’s camp alleged that Adams had two mistresses specially imported from England. Adams’ camp counter-accused Jefferson of sleeping with one of his black slaves and warned he would legalise prostitution, adultery, incest, and the spearing of children. Not quite the dignified image some people think of America’s founding fathers.

Twenty years later, Andrew Jackson ran against the then incumbent John Quincy Adams, nicknamed “The Pimp” because he got a young woman for the tsar of Russia. From Quincy’s followers came a mature rejoinder: “General Jackson’s mother was a common prostitute brought to this country by British soldiers! She afterward married a mulatto man, with whom she had several children, of which General Jackson one!”

The 1876 election came down to a choice between an alcoholic, syphilitic con-artist, and a man so venal who robbed corpses on the battlefield during the Civil War and once shot a gun at his own mother! In short, American politics was never an elegant debating club, but an age of sludge, not gold. And today the world over, campaign rhetoric is more high-toned, partly because legislation and the media try to formulate standards.

The line between negative, and positive campaign is getting narrower, and candidates get slammed for “attacking opponents” instead of “setting forth their own agenda” Well, that is like blaming a team for interfering with the other instead of scoring its own goals. For the NRM, campaigns also mean putting an opponent’s positions and record in the spotlight. Sure, it may be negative, but so what?

If you are a politician, and don’t disagree with your opponent’s positions and record, why are you in the race? Surely, it is legitimate to publicise their actual votes, proposals, and failures. If a politician says he’s for women’s dignity but is before court for alleged rape doesn’t the public have a right to know? I think they do. No, it isn’t with this criticism that we cross the line.

Criticising character flaws that relate to the job is one thing, and it is a public service to alert the voters, if someone running for president is an alcoholic prone to fits of irrational rage and blackouts.

Politics has improved althogh a lot of lies, and smearing opponents with false and unsavory impressions, still goes round, like the FDC, DP and UPC specialise in. Political nastiness is getting more sophisticated as political operators collude with media, marketing and advertising professionals to refine the art of deceptive opinion manipulation.

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