Richard Otim and Risdel Kasasira
18 August 2008
Katakwi — President Yoweri Museveni has said his party, the National Resistance Movement, will never lose a presidential election. Speaking during his tour of eastern Uganda last week, Mr Museveni added that he is in good health and capable of running a government for many years to come.
"Why should we [in the NRM] lose elections?" Mr Museveni told a rally on August 16 at Apuuton Primary School grounds, Katakwi. "We are the ones who restored democracy in Uganda. Who else should win in this country? Do you see me as somebody who is about to collapse?"
The President's comments follow his confirmation, on July 6, that he would run for an unprecedented fourth term of office in 2011 if he was chosen as the NRM candidate.
The comments, however, also come amid growing discontent within the NRM; the party's chairman for eastern region, Mike Mukula, last month accused President Museveni and NRM Secretary General Amama Mbabazi of running down the party by failing to operationalise its structures and stifling internal debate. President Museveni met Mukula during his tour but it is not clear whether the two reconciled their differences.
President Museveni, seized power in 1986 and won elections in 1996, 2001 and 2006, although his popular support has been diminishing with each election cycle. He won 57 per cent of the vote in the last election - down from 75 per cent a decade earlier - and amid widespread allegations of vote-rigging in his favour and intimidation of opposition supporters.
The Supreme Court ruled, however, that the electoral offences could not have affected the eventual outcome of the polls. The NRM also swept legislative seats, winning 214 of the 333 directly-elected seats in the 360-member House.
FDC spokesman Wafula Oguttu said yesterday that Mr Museveni's comments about the NRM's political invincibility were inaccurate.
He said: "That's nonsense. Let him live in self-disillusion. He will be surprised if he is swept away and sent to the dustbin of history." Mr Oguttu added that the President "will soon be surprised".
Although President Museveni's tour was to see, first-hand, progress in the National Agricultural Advisory Services, it has taken on decidedly political tones as the President and the opposition start laying the ground for the next electoral season.
Opposition Forum for Democratic Change leader Kizza Besigye, who came second in the last two elections, has opened the door to the possibility of a third contest against Mr Museveni if he is nominated by his party. The FDC, the Uganda People's Congress, the Justice Forum and the Conservative party recently signed a protocol that seeks to have a unified electoral platform for 2011, and explore the possibility of fielding a single opposition candidate in 2011.
During the same rally, President Museveni said that in some parts of the country, activities of the Naads programme mandated to transform subsistence farming in Uganda into commercial enterprise had not been felt. "It is amazing that some people are still poor in Uganda," the President said. "There is so much wealth in this country but politicians spend much time abusing Museveni on radio stations instead of educating people on how to create wealth."
In a memorandum presented to the President by Katakwi LC5 chairperson Robert Ekongot, the district council called upon the government to put in place conditions to stimulate development.
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Slothful brain old leaders are the reason Africans are stuck behind decades after decades.
The NRM will lose provided the opposition does not let it rig the elections. Like now instead of insisting that the elections be about what Museveni has done or has not done for Uganda for the last 22 years, soon to be a quarter a century, the opposition is wasting time being self absorbed with internecine fights. The elections are about a referundum on NRM and its patron king Museveni. Is the country better off now than it was or it could be ? It is not enough to say Ugandans can sleep now. For example the Luwero residents can sleep now, as Museveni claims he brought them sleep, but by the time they wake up they might find themselves lying landless and homeless on the streets of Kampala. Sleep but don't sleep like the legendary Don Quixote who slept for twenty years, and by the time he woke up the world had moved on and he couldn't recognize anyone or make sense of what was going on just as nobody could tell who he was. Or similarly the colonised Africans who closed their eyes in prayer while the European colonialists took their resources. NRM should not be allowed to use the state institutions as if they belong to it. The army, the police, the courts, the central bank, the civil service, the airs waves, and the parastatals all belong to the taxpayers, the people and the state of Uganda. NRM has only its patron president and his group employees, the ministers and the aides; and resources from Libiya's Gadaffi. That is it. As long NRM is not allowed to grab and monopolise these national resources, which are paid for and bankrolled by the sweat and blood of all Ugandans, they are going to lose the elections because for several decades they have failed to deliver. It should be criminal for any sitting party to arrogate itself the state resources and coffers for its political campaigns and survival to entrench itself in power for ever even when, as in this instance, its performance is unacceptable. Stealing and usurping state resources for partisan political purposes is where real rigging takes or is taking place. The opposition should keep focus on NRM and its sordid record.
How can a sitting African President loose an election when he can use the military, the police and thugs to intimidate the opponents? It is unafrican.Next thing he will do is to blame white people.