Why Museveni, Besigye keep ahead of their rivals

Museveni was declared winner of the February election, although Besigye insists he won the election and still demands an internationally supervised audit to conclusively determine the winner. The Opposition leader has renewed his vow to “never rest” until Museveni is defeated.

On the other hand, former prime minister Amama Mbabazi withered out of the public domain after the Supreme Court disallowed his challenge to Museveni’s re-election.

Mbabazi had before the February election been billed as a potentially powerful challenger to his former freedom fighter colleague, but he came in a distant third with a negligible vote share.

None of the other five individuals who contested the last election is heard from anymore. The other politicians who have in the past expressed interest in leading the country, like Forum for Democratic Change president Mugisha Muntu and Nandala Mafabi, the party’s secretary general, have done little to promote their national appeal in the months after the election.

Apart from Museveni and Besigye, it is perhaps only Kampala Lord Mayor Erias Lukwago who occasionally raises his head, which he often does in the company of Besigye.
Going by the post-election behaviour of the men and women who aspire to lead Uganda, therefore, are there conclusions to draw about why Museveni and Besigye have been the dominant political figures of the last 15 years and appear set to continue occupying this space into the foreseeable future?

A scientific explanation
Two scholars, Cindy Kam and Elizabeth Zechmeister of Vanderbilt University in the United States, did a scientific study about the influence of name recognition on chances of getting elected, whose findings they presented at the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics at Princeton University in April 2011. The study was titled Name Recognition and Candidate Support.

The scholars asked a group of potential voters who out of two hypothetical candidates they would vote for in an election. One of the potential candidates had a familiar name while the other had a not-so-common name. There was also a control group for the study.

We quote a chunk from the conclusions drawn from the study: “…we have shown that subliminal presentations of a hypothetical candidate’s name have significant effects on vote choice, affect, and inferences about viability.

These effects are reasonably large in magnitude and reflect an interconnected set of attitudes about a particular candidate … In particular, we have shown that mere exposure enhances inferences about the viability of a candidate, a finding that relates neatly with the literature on bandwagoning during political campaigns.”

The paper adds: “In contrast to scholarship suggesting that name recognition does not directly influence candidate support, we find clear evidence of a causal link, which demonstrates that – in at least some conditions – name recognition can increase candidate support.”

Simply put, voters are more likely to back and eventually elect a candidate who is often in their faces, which is why politicians fight for space in newspapers, airtime on television and radio, and are increasingly establishing a presence on social media.

In a country like Uganda where a significant chunk of the population still doesn’t consume enough of these media, it may matter a lot how often and how much area a politician who is looking to raise his stock covers.

The authors of the research paper quote what they refer to as “a classic statement” by Stokes and Miller, thus: “recognition carries a positive valence; to be perceived at all is to be perceived favourably.”

To further firm up their findings, they quote Oscar Wilde: “…there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about and that is not being talked about.”

The fight for name recognition
This is a theory Museveni seems to understand very well. He has been a feature in Uganda’s politics since the early 1970s when he declared war against Idi Amin’s government. But in addition to never resting as far as canvassing for support is concerned, Museveni is ever so keen to deny his opponents opportunities to meet with voters.

Under the so-called Movement system under which Museveni first ruled Uganda until 2005, political parties were restricted to their headquarters, unable to penetrate the countryside to popularise themselves. But even after Uganda reverted to a multiparty dispensation in 2005, political party activity continued to be curtailed, with Museveni’s challengers often blocked from addressing rallies.

In the lead up to the February elections, for instance, Museveni had almost a year of traversing a country before official campaigns started, while even Mbabazi, a very late entrant in the presidential race, was blocked from holding consultations around the country, only successfully holding one rally in Mbale before the official campaigns started.

Although Mbabazi had been a permanent feature in Museveni’s power machine until he broke away in 2014, he had not got opportunity to interface with most Ugandans, significantly diminishing his name recognition, and hence his chances of being elected.

A common joke about Mbabazi when he offered himself for the presidency was that some people in western Uganda, the region he hails from, were still not certain whether he was male or female. This is because the name “Mbabazi” cuts across sexes in western Uganda.

Going by the findings of the study cited above, it would be hard for Mbabazi, who would eventually have roughly three months to campaign, to gain sufficient name recognition as to be able to beat Museveni, who some Ugandans could have grown to believe that “president” is another of his names.

Mbabazi would also find it hard to get ahead of Besigye, who had until then campaigned for the presidency on three occasions, and had traversed the country on a number of other occasions. Besigye takes his right to access the voting population very seriously, and he is always keen to enforce this right. He has on various occasions defied police orders against addressing rallies.

In July when he was released from prison amid a warning by a judge that he should avoid situations that could lead to a breach of peace in July, for instance, Besigye defied police orders and attended a celebration of his release in Mbarara Town. The police, who had deployed to block him, were overwhelmed and forced to withdraw.

By constantly keeping on the case and in people’s faces, Besigye gets the opportunity to force people who were reluctant to listen to him in the past to make allowance for his message. This he does, for example, by pouncing on opportunities where the government is deemed by the public to have made a mistake or mishandled a certain project or programme, in which case Besigye presses the point that he presented a better proposal in the previous campaigns.
Besigye takes fight to the world
Showing no signs of relenting on his declared goal of removing Museveni and ending what he calls a dictatorship, Besigye has since taken his fight to the West, attending conventions for Ugandans in Boston and London, and being hosted by on different international media outlets.

Maj Gen Benon Biraaro, a former presidential candidate who, along with Besigye, fought in the war that brought Museveni to power in 1986, months ago warned Besigye against trying to be “Uganda’s (Nelson) Mandela”. Biraaro tried and failed to broker dialogue between Museveni and Besigye shortly after the February election, and has since disappeared from the public space. Besigye rejected Biraaro’s proposals, like he has others, reasoning that Museveni has a record of not respecting talks, although he says he would still participate if the talks have a defined agenda and agreeable mediator, among other demands.

That said, Besigye appears convinced, and he repeatedly says, that Museveni cannot leave power of his own volition, that he has to be pushed out. For this matter, the Opposition leader has defined his motto to his supporter as follows: “start where you are; do what you can; use what you have.”

On September 14, Besigye wrote an article, published online by internationally circulated Newsweek magazine, claiming to have “incontrovertible” evidence that he won the February election by 52 per cent and explaining the basis of his “defiance campaign”, which he said would continue.

Part of the article reads: “Under Museveni, corruption has become the way Uganda works, not the way it fails. The stench of corruption seems to go to the top. We now have in Uganda—a supposedly constitutional republic—a government where Museveni’s son runs the military, his wife is the Education minister, his brother-in-law is the Foreign Affairs minister, and his brother is the Mr Fix-It-All (officially, in charge of “wealth creation”). Many other Museveni relatives and cronies manage the vital institutions of the state.”

Referring to Museveni’s regime as “a tired, old, corrupt dictatorship”, Besigye called on the international community to “stand with the young people of Uganda in their effort to have a non-violent transition”, underscoring the need to “avoid the path that several of the countries in our neighbourhood have trod.”

Museveni’s charm offensive
Museveni, of course, is used to all this. Whereas he sometimes reacts with force when his hold on power seems to be in immediate danger, the 72-year-old leader of nearly 31 years seems to have nearly the same script by which he plays after every election cycle. And, already declared winner and sworn in, he has since activated it.
Museveni kicked it all off at a press conference he held at his country home in Rwakitura, where he vowed to wipe out the Opposition over the next five years. Then, during the Labour Day celebrations in Fort Portal, Museveni vowed to “decisively” deal with the Opposition as Besigye, then locked up at his home in Kasangati, threatened to block the May 12 inauguration of Museveni as President.

Besigye would be arrested on the eve of the swearing-in after he beat the 24-hour surveillance at his home and turned up in the city centre, and was remanded for two months, during which he was charged with treason and eventually released on bail.

But, whereas Museveni demonstrated his ability to use the stick where he absolutely had to, he has made it clear that, as always, his preferred method is to use the carrot.

Since the end of the elections, he has presented himself as a down-to-earth leader, visiting markets and other informal workplaces, something to which Opposition politicians had previously beaten him, although for him he has the added advantage of having hundreds of millions to donate and bankable promises to make.

In seeming imitation of Tanzanian president Pombe Magufuli’s style, Museveni paid an impromptu visit to Mulago National Referral Hospital shortly after the election, and another such visit to a health facility in Wakiso District. At this health facility, the President declared that he had fired the health workers, against whom the residents had complained.

Museveni’s post-election activities have centred around Kampala and Wakiso districts, key among the places where he performed dismally according to official results. In many parts of Kampala, many people are thought to have missed out on voting because voting materials were delivered very late when many had given up and gone away.

Of those who voted in Kampala, official results show Museveni polled 30.9 per cent of the votes, as opposed to Besigye’s 65.9 per cent. These results indicate a marked decline in Museveni’s support in Kampala, since in 2011 elections Besigye (46.86 per cent) only edged Museveni (46.08 per cent) in the battle for the city.

Museveni is keen to enhance his recognition among those who did not vote for him and, perhaps in addition to whatever other tricks he may be able to pull off, endear enough Ugandans to himself and be able to keep in power for longer.

Besigye works hard to destabilise Museveni’s plans, and perhaps none of Museveni’s other opponents works as hard to promote him/herself. The verdict may be that Museveni and Besigye will keep ahead of their rivals for years to come.