I couldnt find a better food for thought than this: Mr Mbabazi’s rogue run for the presidency would be a significant and dramatic development, but would not represent a fundamental change unless other factors — such as civil society, the opposition and citizens — force reforms in the way power is competed for, distributed and exercised. If there is any lesson to learn from the UPC delegates’ conference in Gulu 50 years ago, it is that organisations that do not have internal democracy cannot establish it at a national level. Courtsey of Jette Svensson Postcard from Gulu 1964: Obote’s UPC ghosts National Resistance Movement delegates meeting in Kampala next week are expected to help President Yoweri Museveni consolidate his grip on Uganda’s ruling party by endorsing him as its sole candidate for the 2016 election and giving him power to appoint the secretary general, an elective position currently held by ally-turned-rival Amama Mbabazi. Also at stake, however, is the fate of the NRM itself, as the sun begins to set on its leader after three decades in power, and as internal dissent by pro-Mbabazi allies threatens to force the third exodus from the party in 15 years. The outcome will have an impact on political stability on the country, and perhaps shape the inevitable post-Museveni transition. The run-up to the Namboole conference has witnessed a sharpening of the guillotine since Mr Mbabazi was fired as prime minister and sent on forced leave from his party post in October. President Museveni appointed a committee of his allies to organise the conference. Many pro-Mbabazi officials say they have been disinvited to party meetings or struck off the list of delegates attending the conference. They speak of plans to manipulate the debate and the voting on controversial subjects. Déjà vu For many within the party, the complaints by the pro-Mbabazi allies invoke a sense of déjà vu. Was Mr Mbabazi not in charge of the party primaries for the parliamentary elections in 2010, and the election of the secretary general, both marred by allegations of manipulation and disenfranchisement? Those outside the party look on with more schadenfreude than sympathy towards Mr Mbabazi. Maj Gen Mugisha Muntu, a former army commander who now heads the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), the largest opposition party, said the NRM delegates’ conference is the beginning of the end for the regime. After a police officer attempted to block Mr Mbabazi from speaking at a media event in western Uganda last week, many were quick to point out that the former prime minister was the prime mover of the Public Order Management Act, under which civil liberties, especially of political opponents, were peeled back under the guise of policing. To older Ugandans, the more troubling parallels are with the post-Independence Uganda People’s Congress (UPC) government and its delegates’ conference in Gulu in 1964. Prime minister Milton Obote manipulated the process to ensure that his ally, Grace Ibingira, defeated the more popular and charismatic John Kakonge in the secretary general contest. Within two years of getting rid of their common enemy, Obote and Ibingira had fallen out as Uganda quickly slid further down the abyss of political instability. It is this type of manipulative politics that the NRM promised to end when it launched its guerrilla war in 1981 and took power in 1986. In his autobiography Sowing the Mustard Seed, Museveni casts a withering look at Obote’s manipulations. These perpetual fissures showed up in the contradictions within the UPC, because if it had been a properly constituted and operated political organisation, with at least one common purpose, a way of handling and containing differences would have been sought and found. The only consistent objective, however, especially in Obote’s case, was to stay in power, regardless of the cost to the party and the country,” he wrote. To be fair, the fissures between Ibingira and Obote had some ideological scope to them. Similarly, some of the earlier fissures within the NRM, marked by the departure from the “broad-based” government by Wasswa Ziritwawula in 1989, Paul Kawanga Ssemogerere in 1995 and Kizza Besigye in 1999, were based around an ideological disagreement — whether the Movement was a political system to which all belonged, or a political party hiding behind the law to avoid competitive politics. Mr Besigye’s candidature in the 2001 election, and the legal victories by the DP and UPC against the now-repealed Article 269 of the 1995 Constitution, accelerated the return to multiparty politics and helped resolve this ideological question. The removal of restrictions on political parties was traded for the lifting of the presidential term limits and the closer fusion of NRM with the state. It meant that dissidents could leave NRM, but the party would not leave the state and President Museveni would not easily leave power. Uganda had moved away from the brutal authoritarianism of past regimes but had come to settle among countries that Prof Aili Mari Tripp has classified as semi-authoritarian, which combine elements of democratisation (such as regular elections and an elected but weak parliament) with illiberal rule (such as curtailment of civil liberties, harassment of political opponents, threats to media, and manipulation of the judiciary and the rule of law). The contest between President Museveni and Mr Mbabazi is an important story that will lay bare the ideology, or lack of it, at the heart of the NRM, as a younger generation seeks avenues to shunt aside the organisation’s founding class. So far the younger membership of the party has not articulated any ideology. The bigger story, however, is whether the NRM can propagate the democracy and rule of law it appears to have failed to develop in the party. Here is how President Museveni summarised the events of Gulu and the falling out between Mr Obote and his allies: “Incapable of practising democracy within itself, the UPC could hardly have been expected to nurture it in the country at large.” The contest within the NRM appears to be over power, not ideology, particularly Mr Mbabazi’s refusal to fully endorse the proposal to front President Museveni as the sole candidate, without a free, competitive internal party contest. The president has not faced a serious internal contest for the party candidature in any of the four elections he has contested since 1996. Why, many wonder, did Mr Mbabazi, who has been a key player and a close observer of these events, expect things to be different this time? The country is coming to a difficult situation and the road that has been taken is self-destructive,” said a senior official who has been part of the NRM in its various guises since the early 1970s, and who asked to speak off the record. There are some similar characteristics with Obote because what is being propelled is the self, not the politics of the population,” the official added. Like UPC in the run-up to Independence, NRM, in its post-1980 guise was an amalgamation of interests allied against the murderous Obote regime and northern domination of the military. President Museveni and Obote found themselves leading organisations without coherent organs, but with rival leaders in their own right. Where Obote had the likes of Ibingira, Kakonge, G.W. Magezi, Kabaka Mutesa, Wilberforce Nadiope and others, President Museveni had to deal with three centres of power — the army, over which he has maintained a tight grip; the opposition politicians brought into the broad-based government; and the external, non-fighting, intellectual wing of the NRM. The opposition has long decamped, taking along with it dissenting figures like Mr Besigye, Mr Muntu, Amanya Mushega and others. Among the few remaining intellectual “historicals” in the NRM, Mr Mbabazi is probably the last to harbour any meaningful political ambitions. Getting rid of him would lead to two possible scenarios. On the one hand, it could leave President Museveni with uncontested space in the party to shape the narrative of what the NRM is, allowing him to ride its genuine grassroots support at the next election and handpick his successor thereafter. On the other hand, Mr Mbabazi could articulate an alternative vision for his faction of the party and the country. The Besigye-led split within the elite and the military 15 years ago triggered a violent response as well as an opening up of the political space, but it did not go far enough. Mr Mbabazi’s rogue run for the presidency would be a significant and dramatic development, but would not represent a fundamental change unless other factors — such as civil society, the opposition and citizens — force reforms in the way power is competed for, distributed and exercised. If there is any lesson to learn from the UPC delegates’ conference in Gulu 50 years ago, it is that organisations that do not have internal democracy cannot establish it at a national level. You can’t give what you don’t have,” the senior NRM official said. “You can’t teach what you don’t know.” theeastafrican.co.ke/…/item/0/-/12v…/-/index.html
Posted on: Sat, 13 Dec 2014 14:02:20 +0000
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