Museveni can be an Opposition president

The Republicans are avowedly the oil to the Democrat’s water, policy-wise. 

Broadly speaking, Republicans prioritise individual freedoms, rights and responsibilities. In contrast, Democrats attach greater importance to equality and social community responsibility.

This has tax and expenditure implications, whose conjunction is the public interest. 

The Clinton presidency’s preference for fiscal discipline and open markets implied that he was a Republican president,  at least in the eyes of Greenspan. Who, this time, did not employ Fedspeak, aka Greenspeak. 

This is what economics professor at Princeton University Alan Blinder called “a turgid dialect of English” used by Federal Reserve board chairs in making statements that are neither here nor there. And if they are there, “there” is exceedingly wordy. 

Here, though, he was not vague. Neither is history, which has judged Clinton as one of America’s better presidents. He helped create the conditions for a record 115 months of economic expansion. The American economy has grown at an average of 4 percent per year since 1993, the year Clinton became president. 

Uganda can learn from this. 

Clinton’s policies made concessions to his opponents’ policies and made him seem more Republican than Democrat, to Greenspan. 

It is such concessions that our country requires in binding the wounds of fratricidal political strife. 

To be sure, concessions are shared conversations. And thus present the possibility of a meeting of minds on what can liberate Uganda from Ugandan cynicism. 

If we are to chart this path, President Museveni will have to become an Opposition president. Thus he would adopt the policies of either the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) or the National Unity Platform (NUP). The Democratic Party may be excused as an excuse of a party. 

In the case of FDC, Mr Museveni could make concessions towards the party’s key tenets. That is, restore presidential term limit in the Constitution and entrenching the clause in the Constitution. 

Reduce the powers of the President regarding appointments and require that all Public Service appointments be effected through an open, transparent and competitive process. 

Eliminate all forms of policy, legal and administrative restrictions to the legitimate operations of the media and civil society, among others. 

This would transform President Museveni’s government into one which the Opposition would have little to quarrel with. But in case it still chose to quarrel, it would occupy a lower moral ground. 

This would be a win for the National Resistance Movement (NRM). It is true that the NRM has successfully managed to bogart power and the resources that come with it. This has been deliberate. 

Now, the NRM should deliberately undo this circumstance. For it is causing Uganda to sink like vampiric fangs in its own previously good intentions. 

A mulligan is necessary. 

To the uninitiated, a mulligan is a second chance to perform an action, usually after the first chance went wrong through bad luck or a blunder. It is not too late for the NRM to be granted one. 

Then, when history is written, President Museveni will be recalled as Uganda’s greatest Opposition president. 

In other words, he will be Uganda’s greatest democratic president. 

Mr Philip Matogo is a professional copywriter  
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