Kadaga presidency: How did we sink this low?
By Joseph Tumushabe
9th July 2012: I woke up with a funny feeling about the ruling National Resistance Movement [NRM] party in Uganda. I remember in 2000 when we were establishing the Reform Agenda, we were chided by the NRM-Museveni stalwarts that we did not have “people”.
In fact the big game of Museveni and his cartel of insiders was to ensure that they keep any one of their top dogs from joining Besigye. And boy they were good at the game. Threats to life, business, threats to expose scandals etc stopped all except the diehards in the top echelons of NRM from joining us.
It is true that the bulk of us who joined Besigye at the time were in the lower rungs of society’s economic, political, and social circles. In short, Reform Agenda was made-up of the masses and not “the people” – if you understand what I mean.
The very people whom Mzee Kajabago-Karusoke once [in 1992] called “biological substances” – or the ones that “Sir” John Nagenda disparagingly referred to as the “dregs of society” last year.
What kept us alive was the clarity of how we wanted to be led, and how Museveni and his Government were unable to do this for us. What kept us going was our ability to say the “inconvenient truth” about the Museveni regime that some of us had been closely working with, building, and supporting only weeks and months earlier.
The clarity of our message brought the masses to us but not the “people”. Even when the election was rigged, we did not give up – and we shall never ever give up on our faith.
Just a dozen years down the road, we are wondering what happened to the NRM. That a cross-section of the nation would be holding their breath about the possibility of a lady whose constituency elections have always been marred by vote rigging, sometimes violently, shows how far we have sunk.
That there would be any excitement about the possibility of President Museveni being edged out of power by an MP in whose backyard there was an outbreak of jiggers only two years ago is symptomatic of the disaster that has befallen Uganda.
That the President had to select a man whom he publicly called “lazy” for Prime Minister, and who has failed to mobilise his government to repair a bridge linking his district with other districts, let alone repair roads across the country, is a sign of Museveni’s disastrous Presidency.
Your Excellency, what has happened to your men and women of twelve years ago? END. Login to www.ugandacorrespondent.com every Monday to read our top stories mid-week for our updates
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