Museveni ends Bunyoro tour, Besigye pays tribute

Naturally, a stone had been thrown into a bee hive. Chaos erupted and gun fire rocked when he pulled the trigger on Dr Kizza Besigye’s supporters who sought to rein in him. He was since convicted of manslaughter and handed a 15-year jail term.

A few years from today, Magara will be out of the coolers. However, the families of Gideon Makabayi and Vincent Kauma will for eternity bear the anguish of his actions—their only crime being followers of a candidate the militia did not support.

One could, therefore, feel the pain boiling in Dr Besigye this week as he paid tribute to Kauma and consoled his family. His grave, as with the typical ordinary Ugandan, is unmarked. It is a mass of brown, alluvial soil, a wooden symbol of the Holy Cross and shrubs. Not even an epitaph is scribbled anywhere.

‘Died right in front of my eyes’
Dr Besigye, staring at Kauma’s grave with eyes laden with emotion, bulging with tears restrained, took to memory lane: “Kauma died right in front of my eyes. His death is etched on my memory.

There are many people like him who have died in the struggle to liberate our country from tyranny. We are committed to making sure that their death is not in vain.”

But why dwell on this particular incident of the campaign this week? Precisely because the blood of Ugandans like Kauma cannot and should not be let dry in vein. It must, at least in our minds, remain a fresh reminder that elective politics of bloodshed has no place in 21st Century Uganda.

At his rally in Mpigi, Dr Besigye threw a rough estimate of 500,000 as the number of Ugandans whose lives the war, liberation struggle as its protagonists portray it, from 1981-1986, claimed.

Men like Kauma whom the FDC candidate saluted in death, a decade later, are a powerful symbolic reminder that our politics is built on skeletons of men and women, many of them innocent and we can only do them a favour by playing politics of sanity, tolerance and humility, espousing the point Chief of Defence Forces, Gen Katumba Wamala, made at the launch of Tarehe Sita celebrations , “Uganda is bigger than individuals,” the same point immediate former president of Nigeria Goodluck Jonathan emphasised in his speech conceding defeat to Muhammadu Buhari.

That again was a point reinforced by Kauma’s family to Dr Besigye. No amount of compensation would heal the sores in their hearts and blisters of anguish in their minds.

The best Besigye can do if he wins the February 18 vote, at least to the family, is desist from the temptation of letting power control him
Still in Mpigi, acting district police commander Ronald Mugalula on Tuesday evening survived lynching.

He was only doing his job as a law enforcement officer when he asked Besigye, who had kept voters waiting from 2pm at Mpigi Trading Centre to halt his rally at 6:45pm. In typical defiance mode, Besigye told him off, albeit calmly.

On that day, the DPC was alone at the rally, taking charge of law and order in a crowd of more than 3,000 people.

His juniors were deployed at a nearby health centre and school where the retired colonel was anticipated to pull off his everyday public relations stunts. That DPC could have died at the hands of a mob if Besigye’s police escorts didn’t intervene.

And so President Museveni wound up his campaigns in Bunyoro sub-region where he was accompanied by veteran minister Henry Kajura and Matayo Kyaligonza (who recently took the political contest for NRM vice chairman western Uganda into a personal contest with Museveni’s son in law).

Side by side, three comrades combed the oil-rich region for votes. Kajura and Kyaligonza, who still command a say in the region’s politics, accorded the President a morale boosting trail as he crossed to Fort Portal Town to celebrate 30 years of the presidency.

A lot has been said and written about NRM at 30. Three decades in power is no mean time, and Museveni and company have lots of reflection to do. Are we where we ought to be, or do we find ourselves stuck in a corner where we have to justify our tragic failures by assessing progress based on weak points of past leaders?

Buganda tour
This is the message Museveni will grapple with as he crosses to Buganda sub-region, a make or break swing vote for any politician where at least 60 per cent of the population are lost to stories of how bad former presidents Milton Obote or Idi Amin were.

They want good news of and for today and tomorrow, not lectures they can always find in political history books.

Maj Gen Benon Biraaro, whose rating shot up at least in light of how sections of Uganda’s elite took him, said some interesting things this week. But also took to the politicians’ podium of dismissing opinion polls.

“Do not mind the polls; that is nonsense, rubbish. A liar can lie all the time until they will lie to themselves,” he told supporters this week.

And then he threw his favourite example –Yaya Toure’s one week salary can pay Cabinet for four months—as a standard emphasis on why more attention must go to talent development.
Yaya Touré (born in 1983) is an Ivorian central midfielder for Premier League club Manchester City and the Ivory Coast national team for whom he is the captain. He earns £240,000 a week (about Shs1.2 billion).

Biraaro’s emphasis on talent development actually makes sense, but that’s if we factor into consideration context of Uganda and the UK’s standard and cost of living and the balance sheet of an average business in the latter.

You need to reform the entire economy so a Ugandan can afford to pay Shs500,000 (as a Briton will do) for a football match so that the local clubs can always smile to the bank.

Multinational companies afford millions of dollars in sponsorship to the Premier League clubs and our best performing corporate companies here can only spare a few millions to support local football partly because they too rake in as much.

Biraaro should possibly speak more to how he seeks to turn around the economy and not cherry-picking salaries of European players.

Mabirizi promises free child healthcare

Independent presidential candidate Joseph Mabirizi said all children below nine years will be treated free of charge, should Ugandans elect him president next month.
He said his administration would start by rehabilitating hospitals as well as stocking and staffing them, since currently many are dilapidated and have insufficient drugs.
While addressing rallies in Kampala city and Wakiso District on Tuesday, Mr Mabirizi said he would get money to finance this by eradicating corruption.

Mbabazi promises to scrap electricity tax

Independent presidential candidate Amama Mbabazi excited people at Mutukula border with his promise to scrap tax on electricity, saying this is the reason majority Ugandans cannot afford monthly power bills.

Addressing a rally at Mutukula border post in Rakai District on Tuesday, Mr Mbabazi said his government will also increase access to electricity from the current 12 per cent to 60 per cent by the end of his term in 2021.

“It is unfortunate that when you cross the border here, our counterparts there enjoy better power tariffs than you simply because of the heavy taxes charged on electricity.

You can’t afford paying for electricity and even investors are shunning our country due to expensive and unreliable power supply. This is going to be sorted out,” he said to his ululating crowd.