Raid on Bobi’s offices is persecution of opponents

Leopards are said to never change their spots. If violence and intimidation have always been reliable tools in political contests, why, just continue deploying them. Damn old-fashioned jockeying for influence with the electorate in a fair contest.
President Yoweri Museveni and the NRM party must know something about the National Unity Platform (NUP) party of Mr Robert Kyagulanyi (better known as Bobi Wine) that scares them. 
And so in the middle of last week, security agents raided the NUP head offices in Kampala. The official reason, there is always an official reason which in truth is always a smokescreen, was to look for and confiscate gear that matches what is used by the security services, especially the military. In this case it was primarily the red berets that Bobi Wine’s supporters wear as their badge of honour.
While Mr Julius Malema’s people wear red overalls and hard hats and sometimes red berets over down there in South Africa in a direct nod to the oppressed black labouring class, the Uganda supporters of Bobi Wine, obviously drawing inspiration from the South Africans, love their red tops. And those tops are akin to those used by the Military Police — whose nick name is Red Tops. They are known to be no a nonsense wing of the military. Probably Bobi Wine and his equally youthful supporters want to send that same message — they are no nonsense as they take on Sabalwanyi (General of Generals) Museveni.
There is always a place for youthful exuberance, nay militancy. And Mr Museveni should know that better than most. The problem is that he actually does. His hot-headed youthfulness led him to State House via civil war that left more than a few thousand Ugandans dead. Bobi Wine’s gang-ho ways could easily land him in State House, sweeping Mr Museveni aside in his short march.
But the now-Old Man with a Hat cannot abide that “nonsense”. So he leaned on his tried and tested method of dealing with (potentially) potent political opponents. The leopard felt NUP was poking his rear end — the softer part. The leopard lashed out.
He unleashed his security machine on the mostly scrawny young men and women of NUP. What was most jarring, but may be not so much jarring given what we have seen before, is that the raiding party of the military, the police, the LDU was heavily armed with assault rifles.
Assault rifles against unarmed Ugandans. Assault rifles up against citizens who are engaging politically. What should Ugandans interested in politics do? Why criminalise civil political activity?
Some people are by now inured to Mr Museveni’s political excesses — in this case the blatant use of state security organs for partisan purposes — but they are still wrong, probably unconstitutional like in the present instance.
Mr Museveni is intimidating the young people of NUP by sending armed state security agents to raid their offices in broad daylight using the flimsiest of excuses. He should not. Someone ought to challenge this, have it on the public record, by going to court in the interest of the larger good. Public-interest litigation, they call it.
The raid came on the eve of nominations for candidates to run for parliament this election cycle. It also happened when the leadership of NUP was meeting youth representatives.
It was timed to inspire maximum fear up and down the rank and file of NUP.
The brazen tactics on show on Wednesday have been applied to Dr Besigye and his FDC for years. Long before that they were tested out at Constitution Square (then known as City Square) in the middle of Kampala (next to the High Court, next to the Central Police Station no less) against the DP Mobilisers Group of Michael Kaggwa in the early 1990s.
This leopard never changes his deadly spots. For better. For worse. What to do about that is the question for whoever cares to appreciate the question and provide an answer. Any answer, I suppose.

Mr Tabaire is a media trainer and commentator on public affairs based in Kampala. [email protected]
Twitter:@btabaire