Author: Gawaya Tegulle. PHOTO/NMG
Many not-so-nice things have been said about Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni – scant surprise there, when one has been in power for nearly 40 years. He has been called undemocratic and repressive. In fighting him, his opponents are certain they are “removing a dictator”.
But one will also note that none of Mr Museveni’s opponents has ever called him stupid – because he is not. None has ever accused him of being a drunkard – because he is not. No one has accused him of being high on this or that substance, because the old man is too brilliant to waste his life on alcohol and drugs.
In fact, even at their bitterest, his opponents maintain a healthy respect for the old man’s approach to affairs of state. It must be said that it is hard to figure out how people who are busy “happening” in bars, sipping away at the finest wines and the toughest whiskies and getting high and wild, can be expected to oust a man whose strongest drink is millet porridge and herbal tea.
Mr Museveni has never been a statesman in the mould of India’s Mahtma Ghandi, Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere and South Africa’s Nelson Mandela. No; in fact, impossible. But he is an excellent politician that Russia’s Vladimir Putin, for example, would be proud of; and, you bet, who sleeps with a copy of Niccolo Machiavelli’s dubious book The Prince, under his pillow.
Machiavelli lived between 1469 and 1527. The Catholic Church at one point claimed he was “Lucifer himself” and that the book had been written “by Satan’s finger”. Machiavelli’s book is about how to get power and more importantly, how to keep it – by hook or crook – and that, in doing so, the end justifies the means.
That Mr Museveni, he handles matters with cold-blooded pragmatism; completely devoid of petty emotion and needless sentiment. That is how you have so many of his erstwhile opponents now supping at his table. Not many people recall that the current Speaker, Deputy Speaker and the Inspector General of Government, for example, were stalwarts in the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC).
Or that long before she was elevated, the Prime Minister was on record saying that this government had given her people the short end of the stick. Does anyone recall that to get power, Mr Museveni ousted Gen Tito Okello Lutwa, the father of State minister for Foreign Affairs, Henry Oryem Okello?
Mr Museveni usually lets go of ministers when they lose parliamentary seats; but Oryem has been one of very few exceptions to this rule.
Only a complete idiot would believe that Uganda’s ministerial high table is flowing with love and solidarity. Mr Museveni, who, like we all agree, has a first-rate brain, works with people; not because he is deeply in love with them, but because it is in his strategic self-interest to do so.
That is precisely where the National Unity Platform (NUP), Uganda’s biggest Opposition party is shooting itself in the foot over former Leader of Opposition in Parliament and Nyendo-Mukungwe Member of Parliament, Mathias Mpuuga.
Whether Mpuuga was right or wrong in getting the Shs500 million pay-out, dubbed “service award”, is irrelevant and immaterial in the bigger scheme of things. Point is, NUP has handled the issue in a way that is emotional, ill-advised and not in tandem with strategic political decision-making.
NUP needs to learn how to manage crisis responsibly, in a way that keeps the party intact, rather than what now looks like an obvious break-up on the cards. When you have tried and tested politicians like Mpuuga, Busiiro East MP Medard Sseggona and Dr Abed Bwanika, you don’t sideline them. There is always a way around every problem: find it! A party that intends to last the distance doesn’t do so by throwing away some of its brightest lights.
Ugandans are watching carefully for signs of maturity in NUP; for evidence that it has the credentials to lead, if entrusted with power. So, if NUP cannot handle small internal contradictions, what capacity does it have to handle state power? Ugandans want to be ruled by men, not boys. And that’s why NUP must decide to grow up!
Mr Gawaya Tegulle is an advocate of the High Court of Uganda, [email protected]
