Ssemogerere answers Museveni on Luweero war, governance

I worked closely with many people there and they are the ones who invited me to stand in Luweero for the elections in 1961 when I got elected to represent Mengo North Constituency. So since then I have had intimate relations with many people in Luweero. You should also know that in 1980 all the four seats in Luweero were won by the Democratic Party.

When Museveni and the NRA waged war and Luweero became the centre of fighting, many of the people who made sacrifices and even supported the NRA at a practical level – in terms of food, shelter, name it – were people who had voted for me and we were in close contact. We had been with some of them at school and so on. So I constantly got reports during the war and I know how many of them were abandoned even by the people they had sheltered and assisted with food and other things.

I know how many were killed, I know children who were abducted and taken to the Rwenzoris, and so on. So it is with great pain that I make all these recollections. I even had some of these friends to come and stay with me to save their lives when they were abandoned. It is a very sad story.

I think this country, may be not now but at some stage, needs a full report – a proper, high-powered, professional investigation into what happened in Luweero. We lost friends and relatives. We have had people report of killings and not all of them are well documented to pinpoint who killed who.

So going back to whether the NRA was losing the war, I have people in Namayumba who were abandoned in Lukoola, for instance. I protected one of them. He just managed to escape and he looked me up. I kept him at the (DP) party headquarters under my close watch and I later found a place for him. That time the UNLA was on the offensive. I don’t say that they were always on the offensive, because there are times when the NRA was on the offensive.
But the war being what it was, there were occasions when the NRA was in flight and the time of the 1985 was generally one of those occasions.

The President also took issue with your claim that he does not like political parties
What he said proves me right. I think we have a different definition of multiparty democracy. I don’t take back a word of what I said and I say so in the book. The President’s ideological orientation is inconsistent with multiparty democracy.

President Museveni believes in himself very much. He thinks he means well and that if left free he would do a lot of good things. And he has his own models. He gives us examples of China, Russia and so on. Those are not my models. To me those are in denial of multiparty democracy. And I could say volumes in favour of multiparty democracy. If Uganda was to be a single state, it is only the democratic system which can govern us properly. I don’t believe that you can run a sustainable system when you count on an individual or group of individuals who you give power to control everything.

Secondly, in the absence of a system under which all of us are equal under the law and should be given equal opportunities to pursue our happiness responsibly subject to the law, there is not any other system that can apply to all of us. For example you cannot apply the Buganda system to non-Baganda, or the Ankole system to non-Banyankole or the Acholi system to non-Acholi or the Islamic system to non-Muslims. It doesn’t work.

What has been found in the history of mankind to bring all diverse people together so far is the democratic system. And the democratic system currently allows the emergence and working of political organisations and parties.

In his response, the examples he gives confirm that he doesn’t believe in a multiparty system of that type. He believes in dominant leadership; a party which is in control, more or less not different from the State and where the key institutions like the military are part and parcel of the party in power. So his is a different model and it is a model inconsistent with multiparty democracy as it is known elsewhere.

The President talks a lot about what he calls ideological disorientation, which he says is a big problem. What is your take on it?
I have heard him say so and I think that is abuse of office. A President cannot insult people like that. Who defines ideological disorientation? Why does he think that everyone must think like him? When we went for the Nairobi peace talks in 1985, which Museveni disregarded and continued fighting even after he had signed the Nairobi Peace Accord, he said that he would not negotiate with murderers. Which murderers was he referring to? On the Okellos’ side were people like Robert Kitariko, Sam Kutesa and myself. Were we murderers? Now he happily attended the reburial of Okello’s remains. That is ideological clarity (laughter).

Gen Sejusa recently said he drove you in his car to go and announce your challenge to Museveni
What Sejusa says is absolutely not true. I never sat in his car, not in Mayanja’s car, not anyone else’s car and I never announced my intention to stand in any strange process. It was a process; it was after the party endorsed me, after the coalition (the Inter Political Forces Cooperation [IPFC]) asked me to stand and I announced at the (DP) party headquarters.
The President knew in advance that I would stand against him because the negotiations we had had for nine years had failed. It was still about this issue of multiparty democracy. His idea, as it still is, was to absorb everybody. He doesn’t believe in multiparty democracy as it is practiced elsewhere. But I don’t know why Sejusa said that he put me in a car and he took me to announce ... that was not necessary, it is not true. It would have been sufficient to say that he backed me. He backed me earnestly and he came with Abu Mayanja to encourage me.

What is your take on the talk about joint Opposition candidates?
These alliances and coalitions, structurally, are harder to negotiate and to operate when you have a single constituency electoral system – this winner-takes–all. It is very complicated. This is a universal law as far as I am concerned. Where I see them work, like in Britain currently, it works better after the elections when you are faced with a situation where you have what they call a hung parliament.
Each party fields candidates and when none of the parties gets a majority as it was last time in Britain, they then start to negotiate coalitions after. It is not easy to work out an arrangement to govern the process of agreeing on candidates. It is difficult enough to agree on a joint presidential candidate, but to agree all the way down as I have read in the papers is much more difficult.
In our case in 1996 (under the IPFC) we did not go that far to say which candidates we would field in different constituencies. It is very difficult. It is easier now during by-elections but in a national general election, it is very difficult. I wish they succeed but it is very difficult, for instance, for DP members to be told that we have decided that a UPC candidate will run in this constituency. It is difficult enough to agree on candidates within one party. It requires a lot of work.

What would you propose the Opposition parties do then?
I would propose with regard to the presidency that since one is required to score more than 50 per cent to win outright, it is easier for each party to mobilise as many voters on its own with the aim of jointly scoring more than 50 per cent and prevent the incumbent from going through at the first ballot. If the common adversary is not elected at the first ballot, the runner-up, who will be an Opposition candidate, will more easily rally the different Opposition parties to mobilise their separate voters to back him for the second round.

Do you think you would have done better in 1996 had you followed this approach?
Regarding rivalry and legitimacy as a candidate against Museveni, there can be no comparison between 1996, 2011 and now 2016. In 1996, Cecilia Ogwal was the leader of the UPC group that wanted to challenge Museveni. Whereas some members wanted her to stand, Cecilia actively wooed me. They literally pleaded with me to stand.
Then there was no other Opposition party of consequence. Cecilia invited me to her mother’s home in Lango, she planted banana tries all the way and we did very well in Lango. Henry Makmot, Obote’s bosom friend, threw a feast in my honour when I called at his place as a presidential candidate. So there wasn’t really that situation as it is now, where you have got Olara Otunnu, Norbert Mao, Kizza Besigye, Mugisha Muntu, now Amama Mbabazi and possibly others. If they get three or four candidates to stand, I think they would have better prospects of doing well against Museveni. Because, come to think of it, is anyone of them standing too tall? These are the questions that need to be answered.
But they should look at that possibility because there are some examples outside this country where it works. Because if you don’t lose outright at the first ballot, you are energised to double your effort and the voters are also emboldened. It would be good if they are to agree but if they are to agree they need to be sure that it is not just the leaders agreeing; that even the other party members are agreeing. And they have to find a way of gauging the support for the idea.
I am not sure whether the parties have had sufficient mobilisation at the grassroots level to get the consent of their members, because in 1996 it was done.

What do you say about the demand for electoral reforms?
Sure. I think reforms should be more vigorously pursued. On reversing the lifting of term limits, I think we have not worked harder as a country. We have got a strong moral case. Even in the short time left to the election, people should spend more energy in educating the civil servants, the military, everybody, to seriously support the reversal of the lifting of term limits because it is dangerous to the country.
It is dangerous to those in power and everyone else. You cannot keep an individual in power forever. You are tempting too many people for too long a time. You are more or less telling them to forget about peaceful change and just find a way to pursue violent change. This is what happened in Egypt; it happened in Libya, Syria, Iraq, you name it. There is no justification whatsoever to maintain the mistake that was made to lift term limits.
Of course the other proposed reforms like reforming the Electoral Commission, streamlining the voter register are important. Then the role of the military and its presence in Parliament is an interference with democracy. I don’t see many people in our Parliament who will freely say whatever they may want to say well aware that a military General seated next to them is likely to take offence as to what they have to say.

Some say should the push for reforms fail, the Opposition should boycott the elections
I am not an advocate for boycotting elections. Right now it is a responsible position to take to urge more effort to improve the playing field. I think we should do more as a country. Our political leaders should do more, but also should the professors in universities, clergymen, the lawyers, journalists and everyone else.
And I think there are other institutions which should be sensitised, local and international. Take the African Union, for instance. There was a time when coups were the order of the day but African leaders took a commendable step to discourage coups. They should also be sensitised to embrace free and fair elections.

You make a strong case for funding political parties in your book (Political Party Financing in Uganda: A Critical Analysis in Reference to other Countries)
From the very beginning when this idea was floated by (former US president Franklin) Roosevelt, the fear was that without public funding, a candidate is left to himself to find the money for the campaign. In most cases that candidate will not have the money. So he will go to where he can get the money from.
Roosevelt saw the need for insulating candidates and the political process from the interests of funders. That argument is central and I say it holds, even more so in poor countries like Uganda than in America. Somebody like the president, as I say in the book, has a free hand to use public money even to campaign, doing it under the guise of doing presidential work. You can see it on a daily basis. It is the old argument; it is still the new argument. Public funding reduces the temptation on both sides – the funders and the candidates. (Public funding of political parties has not taken off in Uganda despite a law being passed in 2010)

How do you see money influencing the coming election?
It will be most unfortunate to go to elections with a bad electoral setting given what we have already had in the past. Therefore I don’t think it is too late for wise counsel to prevail. It is in the individual interests of the people in power to allow reforms to take root.
Just look at how many of Museveni’s 1986 colleagues still remain in NRM and are there on collegial terms. But this is not surprising; it is human nature. Things do fall apart. The President now has to go looking for young people to work with. He said recently that NRM is now a party of children. But is he a child? Is he one of them? He is only incorporating these young people so that he can just tell them what to do. It is not human to expect these young people who have been elevated so high to even have the notion that they can challenge or even make suggestions to the President and to the military. How? We all have a challenge of pointing out the necessity of doing first things first. We need to agree on deepening democracy in this country as a basis. This is a hard lesson which has been learnt by many stable democracies around the world. Why should we disqualify ourselves from benefitting from this lesson? Under the current circumstances, public resources will continue to be used to abuse the electoral process. It is already happening.

Some government officials have said recently that democracy undermines service delivery...
But this is not what Museveni and many of them were saying in 1986 or even before when they were in the bush. They were saying that they were fighting dictatorship. They said they were for freedom. When I was in government there was never an argument that democracy is bad. It is not democracy that kills organisations or delays service delivery.
You need to examine the individual causes. You take America or any other country. I don’t know which country hasn’t had problems. If you take what they say, that democracy makes it difficult to deliver services, in a way they are arguing that there is one individual or a group of individuals who are supernatural, do not make mistakes and therefore should not be controlled. Democracy may have its own weaknesses for sure, but it is better than any other human system so far invented.

Corrections

In our September 28, 2014 interview with Ssemogerere;
• We stated that he was in the company of some other DP members when he met President Museveni at Nabbingo shortly after the NRA captured Kampala. Ssemogerere has since clarified that he was alone when he met Museveni.

• On the 1984 Colloquium in Kampala, hosted by the DP, Ssemogerere has clarified that contrary to what we stated that the foreign dignitaries who attended were headed by the Italian prime minister at the time, the leader of delegation was Mario Rumor, then president of the Christian Democrats International, who had previously been prime minister of Italy.