Bobi Wine our freedom fighter, be hard like Stella Nyanzi, don't leave prison

By Michael Woira

There are several ways of serving fellow Ugandans in a more public and personal way than running for office. Politicians often put themselves on display for criticism, compliment, and everything in between.

Certainly, everyone does it with their own intentions and bear in mind what they feel like achieving, many of them become candidates of getting sympathy to access various opportunities, others join politics just because they see it as the only avenue to becoming rich easily and others just do it because they see it as the most comfortable job that needs little or no supervision from the voters.

The basics of running for office in Uganda is mainly making sure you have time, you have people who support you and money is also one of the requirements you must have to contest and be part of the elections. If you don't have enough of any of those, chances are good you'll lose. The important thing for you to remember if you're deciding to join politics is to know that you are in this virtually alone.

That aside, democracy has really granted politicians a right to act properly and improperly depending on their motives but in Uganda's case politicians use it to cause fears on the people and this is because there is a lot of freedom of speech, freedom of Movement and a lot more of democracy that restrictions on some rights that people are misusing.

I have seen all kinds of political drama happening in this country since I was young up to date. I remember the big untouchable politicians of those days like Kiiza Besigye, Alhajji Sebagala, I even remember the time when the famous Hajji alagide song was the only famous song and several slogans were printed and posted everywhere in praise of Besigye and Sebagala. Leave alone Kyarenga and Tuliyambala engule that have not captured a serious Airwave and masses, Hajji Alagide was the real deal everywhere and we also used to sing to the tune while we were young in our primary school.

With our current politics and kind of politicians, you can easily mistake parliament for comedy store since almost half of the arguments are based on anger, hearsay, politicking, and too much noise. Sometimes I feel sorry for the speaker of parliament because it is very easy managing baby class pupils than managing the parliament of adults because kids can listen to the teacher attentively but some members of parliament at times don't even know the rules of procedure in parliament so they even keep shouting even when the speaker puts them to order.

To me, I think amateurism can refresh politics and if we have ethical politicians then we can have a very friendly peaceful political environment but it's the opposite here in Uganda, people even decide to exchange brawls in parliament and their electorates praise them for fighting in the house, people break parliamentary items and they just walk away freely?

Ohh my dear country Uganda, anyway we need as many people to join politics, but unfortunately we have a few good minded people joining leadership, politics is now for the wordy people, those who can make the loudest noise and those who can compose radical songs that are against the current leadership, politics here is now for the most famous, those with a lot of money in the villages where we stay, it's for those that disrespect government, those who can abuse the president while appearing on a TV or radio talk shows, those that can stand firm and exchange brawls with security agencies, those that can command demonstrations.

It is no longer about the quality of leaders, it is now about the number of leaders representing which political formation but all this will be overcome as time goes on.

Now to the freedom fighter that we have here in Uganda, Bobi Wine, he has become the king of the jungle, he is now the fat bull in the kraal, he acts the way he wants, he uses the nastiest language while referring to the president of the country, he calls him names and he does all this in the name of looking for sympathy from his followers who also consider that as right.

Fine, you wanted to go and make a statement at the CID headquarters but was it necessary to advertise and mobilise people to follow you yet you very well know about the Public Order Management Bill, wish you know how people lose their properties and merchandise during such demonstrations you couldn't be doing such over and over but I am very sure you don't really know all that happens because for your case you just wave to them as you are sailing in your expensive donor-funded cars.

Anyway, since you are our own, just follow the footsteps of our other freedom fighter Stella Nyanzi and make a similar decision of not leaving prison for at least one year or five months minimum so we believe you are more of a freedom fighter than Nyanzi a female who has been there for long. During your year in Luzira, you will be back and for sure the peace we will have everyone will just appreciate you for your absence in our communities.

The writer is a Pan Africanist