Grace Matsiko
19 January 2008
THE Ugandan leadership ignored intelligence reports that the Kenyan elections would ignite violence and compromise Uganda's national security for fear of harming relations with the eastern neighbour.
The Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) had sought stringent contingency security and other strategic arrangements ahead of the December 27 elections.
That would mean substantially raising the alert level of the country's security services and essentially declaring Kenya's elections as posing a serious national security threat, a suggestion the political leadership balked at.
The political leadership led by President Museveni refused to put Kenya on the list of high security concerns arguing that President Mwai Kibaki's government would think Kenya had been labelled "an enemy" of Uganda.
JIC is the country's top security committee that gathers and analyses intelligence and recommends action. It brings together the heads of the internal and external security organisations, military intelligence, the Police Counter-Terrorism Agency and the Directorate of Criminal Investigations.
On January 15, Daily Monitor reported that JIC
warned the government of likely violence in Kenya long before the disputed December 27 presidential election but the warnings were brushed aside.
Events have since vindicated the intelligence community. The post-election violence in Kenya has so far claimed more than 600 lives, about 250,000 people have been made homeless and hundreds have fled into exile, especially to Uganda.
Uganda has seen serious disruptions to its imports and exports through the port of Mombasa, its main gateway to the sea, leading to massive fuel shortages in the country.
Because the Uganda government declined to adopt the recommendations of the intelligence agencies, it did not activate its contingency measures, if it has any at all.
The co-ordinator of intelligence agencies, Gen. David Tinyefuza, said on Thursday, however, that the intelligence agencies never listed Kenya's elections as a threat to national security.
"Why would Kenya be a security threat?" he said. "Instead it would be a flashpoint."
But Internal Affairs Minister Ruhakana Rugunda said the political crisis in Kenya was "not a surprise" to Uganda because the campaigns had been "contentious".
Said the minister: "President Museveni has spoken to President Kibaki and the leader of the opposition Raila Odinga with a view of solving the problem and the President has expressed his willingness to play a positive role in solving the present stalemate."
Ironically, the present tensions in Kenya have since led to suspicions of Uganda's involvement.
Accordingto intelligence officials who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal, the Kenyan government had initially judged the Ugandan leadership to be unenthusiastic toward President Kibaki's campaign for re-election.
His allies cited two examples. One that in October last year Uganda "easily" allowed Mr Odinga to hold political meetings in Kampala - which has a sizeable Kenyan population of professionals and students - where he accused the Kibaki government of corruption, ethnic bias, and non-responsiveness to high levels of crime and unemployment.
It did not help that senior NRM officials and supporters, among them Mr Mike Mukula, the party's eastern region national vice-chairman; former government MP Elly Karuhanga; and former external security chief David Pulkol happily guided Mr Odinga around.
The Kibaki campaign was also not happy with Kampala for allowing Mr Jerry Okungu, an Odinga loyalist, to write a column in the state-owned New Vision newspaper in which he quite openly rooted for his man.
According to our source, at the time the government gave a green light to the New Vision to allow Mr Okungu to write the column, it had no idea he was Mr Odinga's man.
Mr Okungu consulted for the NRM publicity team during the campaigns leading up to the 2006 general elections.
Kampala, however, told Mr Kibaki's campaign that Uganda believes in the freedom of the press given that opposition politicians such as Gulu L C-V Chairman Norbert Mao writes a column in the same newspaper.
In any case, Kampala argued, President Museveni declined to meet Mr Odinga during his October visit.
The Kenyan President's camp seems to have been fully appeased after Mr Museveni became the first leader to congratulate Mr Kibaki upon his re-election, however controversial.
For his efforts, it is now Mr Odinga's party - the Orange Democratic Movement - that is alleging that Ugandan troops have crossed the border to shore up Mr Kibaki's disputed victory and stay in power. The Ugandan authorities have denied sending troops across the border.
Our source said that President Museveni had no choice but to congratulate his Kenyan counterpart.
First, because he needed to get the Kenyan government to provide security for cargo, especially fuel, destined for Uganda whose economy was beginning to reel from fuel scarcity.
He could not do that without recognising Mr Kibaki who had been declared winner of the presidential election by the Electoral Commission of Kenya and duly sworn in.
Two, if he sat on the fence, he would not only prove the suspicions the Kibaki camp had, but he would also send the "wrong message" to his own opposition in Uganda.
Mr Museveni's position has always been that whoever loses an election should petition the courts not engage in any other means of redress. Mr Odinga has refused the court option and chosen street demonstrations.
Whichever way the Kenyan political antagonists view each other, they still appear to take Uganda into account.
Reports that have thus far not been disputed say that President Kibaki made a quiet visit to Uganda in the aftermath of the election.
Not to be left behind, Mr Odinga sent his party's secretary general, Prof. Anyang' Nyong'o, to meet with President Museveni a week ago.
Prof. Nyong'o, a political scientist, is close to several people in the present Ugandan leadership. , most whom he met while a student at Makerere University.
One such person is Minister Rugunda. Prof. Nyong'o was president of the Makerere Students Guild in the early 1970s when Dr Rugunda was a leader.
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