Poor Amama is beholden to one-man rule What is Amama Mbabazi’s game plan? I doubt that he has any. Here is why. It had long been known that there was a simmering fallout between Uganda’s ruler and his de facto number two, Prime Minister John Patrick Amama Mbabazi, aka JPAM. The first key pointers started in 2008 with the land sale controversy involving JPAM and the National Social Security Fund (NSSF). Although President Museveni openly defended his then Security minister, the First Lady was forcefully critical of the man who was once called “super minister.” But that was not all. Before long, the brewing bad blood between the First family and JPAM soon drew in one of the latter’s daughters. Her tack was unconventional. She took to social media. Her comments on Facebook gave away quite a bit of what could have been going on between the Sabalwanyi and the erstwhile super minister. It’s possible that one’s daughter can take a divergent political view and be critical of a government in which her dad serves at the highest level. But now we can surmise that JPAM’s daughter’s views were neither totally innocuous nor entirely removed from the dad’s politics. If the events of Kyankwazi from two weeks ago finally blew the lid, this week’s meeting at State House Entebbe offered by far the most potent pointer to the schism in the ruling behemoth, the NRM party. The Observer reported on Wednesday that Museveni pinned his PM with incontrovertible evidence of the latter’s clandestine schemes to unseat the three-decade Ugandan ruler. On his part, JPAM again strongly denied involvement in any activities aimed at garnering support for the nation’s number one job. Why wouldn’t JPAM tell Mr Museveni that, yes, Mr President, I too wish to be called His Excellency? But if the NRM is a democratic organization, as its leaders and apparatchiks are wont to emphasize, what’s wrong with a senior member like JPAM harbouring presidential ambitions and organizing to unseat the current chairman? If JPAM has been courting some NRM cadres and building a support network, hasn’t General Museveni been doing more than that, every year for the last three decades? The hallmark of democracy is competition. How come the chief author of Uganda’s current democracy dreads competition and demands that everyone can only mobilize with his tacit approval? This can only confirm that we have a full-blown dictatorship and JPAM is acutely aware of this. If there were ever any doubts as to the autocratic tendencies of General Museveni, the current saga has totally cleared the air. Sadly though, like all other former loyal servants of the single visionary, JPAM is wary of doing a Kizza Besigye by telling the emperor what he doesn’t want to hear: that he is naked. Thus, stampeded to endorse a mendacious mission aimed at clamping his wings, JPAM couldn’t stand up against the Kyankwanzi coterie. He couldn’t muster the courage to denounce a charade that not only undoubtedly made a mockery of the basic tenets of democracy but also sought to publicly humiliate him. Challenged to confirm that he has presidential ambitious, which he obviously has, JPAM chose to affirm that General Museveni is the best thing to have happened to this country and should therefore not be dispensed with so easily. In a repeat of what we have witnessed over the last couple of decades, after JPAM is fully purged and cut to size, like we saw with former Vice President Gilbert Bukenya, that’s when he will come out to do what he should be doing now: telling General Museveni that his time is up. JPAM’s sage clearly illuminates arguably the biggest tragedy facing our country. Political leaders who should be articulating an alternative agenda and charting a new course for the country have instead remained beholden and hostage to one-man rule. Asked to account, they don’t fight to clear their names through the due process of the law; instead, they seek the short cut through a man who once said he is the “administrative chief justice.” When Bukenya was asked to account for loss of funds during the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in 2007, he cried foul and sought the intervention of the president. When JPAM was cornered in the NSSF land controversy, he didn’t insist on the due process of clearing his name; instead, he was content to apologize and ask the chief visionary to forgive him. In effect,both Bukenya and JPAM, perhaps unwittingly, handed General Museveni the tool with which to blackmail them. Once seen as smart, savvy and skillful, the Kyankwanzi antics unmasked a supine and subdued JPAM, underlining that he may after all not have what it takes to occupy the top most job in the land. Yet the humiliation he suffered (which we are told his wife couldn’t take down lying!)bespoke of the politics of intrigue and machination that JPAM for long executed with remarkable dexterity on behalf of his boss.💻
Posted on: Sun, 09 Mar 2014 04:24:20 +0000
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