Prime
Dangling jobs at Opposition leaders’spouses: Is Museveni’s strategy holding?
President Museveni (centre) attends the traditional wedding of Lira Municipality MP Jimmy Akena and now Kampala minister Betty Amongi in 2013. PHOTOS | FILE
What you need to know:
- Ms Yogi Birigwa may never have an opportunity to put the record straight in the same way that Ms Winnie Byanyima did, but those who think that Ms Biriggwa’s appointment was political might as well be forgiven because her appointment seems to fit in a pattern that Mr Museveni has been employing over the years, dangling jobs at the Opposition.
On September 14, Cabinet approved 10 names of individuals who will constitute the board of the Uganda Tourism Board (UTB) for the next three years.
The board is headed by Mr Daudi Migereko, a former Member of Parliament for Butembe County in Busoga, who also served on Mr Museveni’s Cabinet for more than 15 years and held key dockets, including that of Energy and Mineral Development and Lands and Urban Development. He is going to serve a second term as chairman.
Other members of the board which is charged with marketing and promoting Uganda as the tourist destination of choice are Ms Vivian Lyazi, Paul Mwanja, Ronald Kaggwa, Eng Ayub Sooma, Chemonges Mongea Sabila, Eddy Kirya, Susan Muhwezi Kabonero, Dr Suleiman Katende and Ms Yogi Mamo Yewagnesh Biriggwa.
Ms Yogi Biriggwa is the wife of the national chairman of the biggest Opposition party, the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC). That has now become a major talking point.
Former Makerere University don, Prof Fredrick Oweyegha Afunaadula, quickly took to social media to question the timing of the appointment, especially coming at a time when her husband is competing with FDC president, Mr Patrick Amuriat Oboi, for the party’s presidential flag bearer’s position.
The environmentalist seemed to suggest that the President was sending out a coded message to members of FDC and the wider Opposition.
“What impact does it have on Opposition? Will the latest appointment of Wasswa Birigwa’s wife to the Uganda Tourism Board by President Museveni have a negative influence on his bid to become the FDC flag bearer in next year’s presidential elections?” he wrote.
Was the President or his handlers playing politics or not?
Mr Migereko dismisses those reading politics in the appointment, saying that she has, if anything, been a member of the board since 2017.
“She will be serving her second term on the board having been nominated for appointment by her constituency, the airlines industry,” Mr Migereko says.
Ms Biriggwa is the chairperson of the Board of Airlines Association of Uganda.
Mr Migereko also argues that those who are mistakenly looking at Ms Birigwa’s reappointment with political lenses certainly do not know how competent and knowledgeable she is.
“The reappointment was to my understanding based on her competence. She knows her work. She understands the airline business very well and how it relates to the tourism industry,” he says.
Putting politics above competence
Many Ugandans do not have the kind of information that Mr Migereko has on Ms Biriggwa. They would, therefore, not know whether she is competent or not.
Under such circumstances, they would rather relegate competence to the periphery. Sadly, this is not the first time that this has happened.
When Ms Winnie Byanyima, the wife of the former FDC president and four-time presidential aspirant Col Dr Kizza Besigye became the executive director of Oxfam International, word around political circles and on social media was that it was President Museveni and his government that had over the years helped her to get jobs.
Prior to taking up the job at Oxfam, Ms Byanyima had between 2004 and October 2006 worked as the director for Women, Gender and Development at the AU headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, from where she in November 2006 joined the United Nations Development Programme as its director for gender. She became the executive director of Oxfam International in January 2013.
The jobs raised suspicion that Ms Byanyima and her husband would bash Mr Museveni during the day, but dine with him in the night. The claims gained momentum on social media in July 2019 after Daily Monitor published an interview in which she said that it was the right time to remove Mr Museveni from power.
One Junior Emmanuel Mugisha while addressing himself to Ms Byanyima in a comment on the story wrote: “I can’t believe you are the one saying that when (President) Museveni is the one who recommended you for that job that you are having.”
One Karishma Okeke, in a rejoinder added: “I have a feeling you (Byanyima) and your husband (Dr Besigye) are [on an] invisible mission; don’t deny that you [are] an NRM mole ...”
In an interview with Sunday Monitor, Ms Byanyima dismissed talk that Mr Museveni had either gotten her or recommended her for the jobs as the “biggest lie”.
“But they didn’t get me the job. No way. And they didn’t confirm the job and even if they had said that they did not want me, they would not have removed me. I was there professionally, but I have to say that they didn’t try as a government to fight me. No! They didn’t, but they also didn’t get me a job. No! Never! Never!” she said.
Ms Byanyima, however, declared back then she would not hesitate to seek government endorsement if she were to ever apply for a job that required approval from by the home government.
The Otunnu experience
In 1996, Mr Olara Otunnu attempted to become secretary general of the United Nations, but his name did not make it to the final list of nominees from whom the Security Council made a selection because he did not have the backing of the Government of Uganda.
Ghana’s Kofi Annan, who took the job, appointed Mr Otunnu the Under-Secretary General for Children and Armed Conflict. A year after he left that job, Mr Museveni owned up to having frustrated Mr Otunnu’s attempts to rise to the top of the UN.
“I talked to Nelson Mandela, and we blocked him. However, he was made Under-Secretary General,” he told foreign diplomats who were touring mass graves where victims of the Luweero war were buried.
In light of such an admission, it had been perceived to be inconceivable that he would veto any application by Ms Byanyima. Ms Byanyima has since taken up the job of executive director of the UNAIDS.
She doubles as an Under Secretary General of the United Nations. It is not clear whether Mr Museveni’s government endorsed her for the job. That we shall perhaps tell with time.
Pattern
Ms Birigwa may never have an opportunity to put the record straight in the same way that Ms Byanyima did, but those who think that Ms Biriggwa’s appointment was political might as well be forgiven because her appointment seems to fit in a pattern that Mr Museveni has been employing over the years – dangling jobs at the Opposition as a means of making it ineffective.
First it was by giving key members of the older political parties, the Uganda Peoples Congress (UPC) and Democratic Party (DP), jobs.
They include Mr Daniel Omara Atubo, Gerald Ssendawula, Aggrey Awori, Prof Gilbert Bukenya, Jacob Oulanyah, Christopher Kibanzanga, Alex Onzima, Betty Kamya, Badru Wegulo, Nelson Ocheger and Muhammad Baswari Kezaala.
For some of those people, the jobs turned out to be poisoned chalices. Some of them have since sank into political oblivion, hardly heard of.
The tactic now seems to have changed to targeting spouses of people in the Opposition. Ms Betty Amongi, the wife of Mr Jimmy Akena, the leader of one of the factions of the Uganda Peoples Congress (UPC), is the minister for Kampala, while Ms Florence Nakiwala Kiyingi, the wife of Mr Deo Kiyingi, a prominent member of DP, is the minister for Youth.
Mr Deo Kiyingi, a prominent member of DP, and his wife, Youth minister Florence Nakiwala Kiyingi.
And at times it works the other way round too. For example, former Deputy Kampala Lord Mayor Sarah Kanyike’s husband, Mr Ssebaggala Kigozi Muhammad, was appointed a commissioner of the Electoral Commission (EC) before she was appointed minister for State for the Elderly.
Message
What sort of messages is President Museveni sending out by making such moves?
Prof Paul Wangoola, who was a member of the National Consultative Council (NCC), which served as Uganda’s interim Parliament in the aftermath of the fall of the Idi Amin regime, says Mr Museveni is only sending out a message that he is the alpha and omega, and giver of things.
“This is abuse of power. He is using the power to practice patronage for personal gain. We should be questioning the whole structure that gives Mr Museveni so much power. This (giving jobs) is a form of bribery and it comes with so many things like bicycles for NRM chairpersons, vehicles for people like Full Figure, elevating small towns to city status such that some people are assured of jobs and access to land and other resources,” Prof Wangoola argues.
He believes that the situation is complicated by the fact that most people are so poor and desperate that when jobs are dangled at them, they run without thinking much about the ramifications of such actions.
The question though is what effects that such appointments have on the Opposition figures involved and the Opposition as a whole.
Sowing suspicions
Dr David Babi Kamusaala, who teaches Psychology at Mbarara University of Science and Technology (MUST), says it part of a wider strategy to weaken the Opposition and galvanise the NRM’s numbers.
“First of all it sows seeds of discord. I know of so many people who were convinced that Ms Byanyima had gotten her jobs because of Mr Museveni’s influence. Those felt that Ms Byanyima and her husband had been bought off. Such people will no longer have a cause to support or stay in the Opposition. They end up either withdrawing or simply joining the NRM. Whatever they opt to do benefits the NRM,” Dr Kamusaala said.
As earlier pointed out, the jobs in some cases turned out to be poisoned chalices. How many more will partake of the same? That we wait to see.
Appointments
Ms Biriggwa’s appointment seems to fit in a pattern that Mr Museveni has been employing over the years – dangling jobs at the Opposition as a means of making it ineffective. First it was by giving key members of the older political parties, the UPC and DP, jobs. They include Mr Daniel Omara Atubo, Gerald Ssendawula, Aggrey Awori, Prof Gilbert Bukenya, Jacob Oulanyah, Christopher Kibanzanga, Alex Onzima, Betty Kamya, Badru Wegulo, Nelson Ocheger and Muhammad Baswari Kezaala.
