Mohammed Matovu
13 January 2008
column
Not so long a go I wrote in these pages that the day voters will learn to speak truth to power, all politicians will run crawling. I still think this prediction will come to pass, if it hasn't already.
After decades of feasting on sermons from political preachers, it is now time for business unusual. Voters are practicing what politicians practice--not what they have been preaching. The name for this game is speaking truth to power.
How did we get to this point in the politics of adult suffrage? Well, it might have been the case of politicians doing their job of talking really well and walking really badly.
Anybody who is familiar with electoral processes in democracies will attest to the fact that it is during elections that candidates appeal to our sense of nationalism. They make all manner of promises in the name of 'development of my area and country'.
And gullible as we seem to be (never mind that we are not as less intelligent as politicians think), we have not disappointed--always delivered the numbers to catapult them into offices and up the social rungs. But like the submissive spouse who has hit a stone wall in the relationship, voters are learning to speak truth to power.
A number of pundits have analysed the implications of the Bugweri protest vote and I will not delve into them. However, it is worth noting the little things in the Bugweri by-election which demonstrated how politicians make a mockery of their electorate during voting period.
Explaining the National Resistance Movement (NRM) party's humiliating defeat, Eastern bloc power broker, also chief election campaigner for Mr Kivejinja, Mr Patrick Bageya, inanely said it was the case of an elephant eating its own trunk. "It is NRM defeating NRM," he said. He explained how he had requested the Energy Minister to connect electricity to the area and he 'refused' and how Mr Kivejinja's camp had to make do with a generator in some areas during the campaigns.
Mr Bageya, at least you are lucky to have come face to face with dead darkness for only a few days. Pity those who have courted darkness as a way of life--those people you were courting to vote for your candidate.
Mr Bageya further lamented how it was defeatist for them when voters asked what became of the electricity promises the NRM party made. In my opinion, this was the mother of all ironies.
After pitching camp in the East to canvass votes for his party (and not necessarily for Kivejinja as some pundits allude), which by the way is perfectly legitimate, President Yoweri Museveni was quoted to have said that by virtue of being Third Deputy Premier, Kivejinja was among the 'ten most important people' in the government. It seems voters saw through this political-speak because the bad thing with politics is that it is not hard to tell exactly where power lies.
Appealing to nationalistic sentiments during elections (Ugandaring people) and serving personal interests once in power is an eye opener and has built a critical mass of sceptical voters across the continent. Right from South Africa--where Jacob Zuma beat President Thabo Mbeki to the much coveted African National Congress leadership, through Kenya--where victory is being contested, to Uganda where pockets of disillusionment are beginning to emerge.
Voters have a good appreciation that we all can't lead but all they ask for, most times, from their leaders are minimum transformations like good roads, security, power, jobs, education and affordable heath care.
In the race to 2011, politicians ought to read voter temperatures right because voters are, like never before, certainly going to want to determine their own destiny and demystify political offices.
In effect, the tendency to Uganda people only during elections is about over.
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