The debate as to whether President Yoweri Museveni is already setting ground for another elective term in office in 2011 has kicked off with a storm. Listening to all the talk on whether the President will go for a fourth term or not and the accompanying justification by those for and against the move reveals a worrying shallowness.

Those in the Opposition approach the fourth term debate with emotion, the same way they did the third term and thus legitimised it.

Those in the Museveni camp play up the individuality of politics and discuss Museveni the man. They have succeeded in tricking the Opposition into that trap and turned a largely rural, less ambitious, largely illiterate population into thinking of Uganda's future - security, economic stability and services as rested in President Museveni's fate. We have security if he is here and insecurity if he is not!

It is even sad to note that the enlightened leadership this country has had over the last two decades or so, has miserably failed to raise the level of debate above bread and butter issues. Talk about leadership for posterity, planning for the future, the need to see beyond the next election, the afternoon meal and you will be reminded thus "for as long as we are still okay with his leadership then no need to worry."

Political activists will quickly muzzle comparison with developed democracies saying, Uganda is not like them because those countries do not share anything with Uganda, they are economically advanced. So debate on their constitutional discipline will never surface in our debate.

The issue of whether or not Mr Museveni should stay longer can only make sense if Ugandans debated the principle that the President, however good, can never be there for ever and that the country must prepare for such a time. His goodness or badness not withstanding and say "we don't even need the term debates."

US black civil rights activist John Lewis captures what I feel many Ugandans think of first when it comes to the Museveni peace, security and democracy since the second liberation.

"There is no question about the beauty of this country, at least not in my mind. For all the wounds, scars and pain that inflicts it, this is still home to me. My earliest memories are not of drudgery and labour, oppression and inequality, exclusion and neglect. Those memories would take shape only as I grew up. The world I knew as a little boy was a rich and a happy one. In the same way that my mother never felt poor as a little girl, I didn't know the meaning of the word when I was small. We were poor-dirt poor-but I didn't realise it."

The sad consequence of sinking into some form of slumber and an imaginary comfort zone.