Recent press reports that FDC leader Kizza Besigye was blocked from appearing on a Karamoja radio station, allegedly by the Resident District Commissioner, have re-opened the debate on whether Uganda is yet a multiparty democracy as it was widely thought. At around the same a Bukedde TV scroll read: "abebibiina bawakanyizza etteeka lye ttaka..." Now Abebibiina under the disguised NRM's single party system was the general Luganda term used to describe opposition parties agitating for the return to multiparty rule. It was assumed that after the restoration of multiparty democracy in 2005, the terminology would change, as the movement had finally become one of the country's political parties. Indeed it did, at least for the government owned English language press. But the continued use of "abebibiina" in the vernacular press cannot be an oversight. The editors at Bukedde are well informed individuals who cannot feign oversight on such a fundamental matter.

So, the regime is playing with two sets of discourses. One for the English speaking and the other for the vernacular speaking classes. And also effecting two sets of media restrictions, one for the vernacular (all the still closed FM stations are Luganda stations: two CBS stations and Suubi FM) and the other for the English speaking stations. The strategy is perhaps to maintain the rural communities in the past mindset- of the single party state of the pre- 2005 NRM, when belonging to the opposition was a criminal act. This serves to intimidate the rural and less educated populations from supporting opposition parties. The regime is also maintaining two sets of restrictions on media appearance by opposition politicians, one for the Kampala stations (fairly lax) and another for upcountry stations (extremely tight) enforced by RDCs.

The other aspect worth investigating further is the difference in 'charge sheets' against the Buganda owned CBS. The President has vowed never to open the station until "they stop abusing me". To the President, CBS was closed on account of abusing him. Yet, another of his more loyal employee, Chairman of the Broadcasting Council insists that CBS was closed because it was inciting violence. Two different charge sheets from the employed and the employer. What should Ugandans make of these contradictions?

There is no doubt that the media, one of the most important agents of democratisation is under siege in the run up to the 2011 general election which skeptics prefer to call another "general selection", as opposed to election. In the absence of a functional free, the country's dream of a free democratic society has begun to fade.

It gets scary each passing day, when it becomes apparent that Uganda is moving the direction of Kamuzu Banda's Malawi, where opposition was unthinkable or when it existed it was frequently equated with an act of treason. An illustration of the Kamuzu model is found in a wittingly descriptive argument from Malawi: "There is no opposition in heaven. God himself does not want opposition - that is why he chased Satan away. Why should Kamuzu have opposition?" (Decalo 1992:10). Equating the "political kingdom" with heaven, the Malawian leaders rendered opposition despicable. Thus opposition and dissent came to entail severe punishment and repression. For the 23 years of NRM rule, opposition in Uganda has been extremely civil. There is no major opposition party that can be described as radical or even violent in orientation. All opposition parties seem inclined to a negotiated power struggle, through democratic actions. In emerging democracies, tendencies to violence (or return to it) and radicalism occur under circumstances where fair and peaceful competition is rendered impossible. It is part of human being's constitution that if frustration, dissatisfaction, and grievance are sufficiently prolonged or sharply felt, aggression is quite likely, if not certain to occur (Gurr, 1993). Gagging and criminalising the opposition, whether selectively or otherwise is not a characteristic of a multiparty democracy and certainly not recipe for political stability.