WORLD AFFAIRS

Back in power

Yoweri Museveni is re-elected President of Uganda for a second consecutive term.

M.S. PRABHAKARA
in Cape Town

THE victory of Yoweri Museveni in Uganda's March 12 presidential election was never seriously in doubt. In a field of six candidates, Museveni won his second elected term as President on the very first count, securing nearly 69 per cent of the votes. His nearest rival, Kizza Besigye, a physician by training, was one among Museveni's close comrades-in-arms in the guerilla war and later held senior positions in the government. Besigye, whose main hope lay in forcing a second round run-off, trailed far beh ind Museveni, securing less than 28 per cent of the votes. The other four candidates together polled a little more than 3 per cent of the votes. In the previous presidential election held in March 1996, where he had faced two candidates, Museveni had sec ured 76 per cent of the votes.

JEAN-MARC BOUJU/AP
Yoweri Museveni in Kampala after he was re-elected President.

For one who was fighting elections for the first time, Kizza Besigye did well to score nearly 28 per cent of the valid votes. Although there was much recrimination and bitterness in the campaign and stray incidents of violence occurred following the anno uncement of the results, the situation might improve since the present exercise was only a rehearsal for the next presidential elections, due in 2006. Museveni cannot contest again as the Constitution allows only two terms for a President. The political credibility of Besigye and other candidates will depend on how they and their supporters will fare in the parliamentary polls to be held before the end of May 2001.

Politically, the victory means an endorsement, for the second time in less than a year, of 'non-party politics' represented by the National Resistance Movement (NRM) - the name under which the Uganda Patriotic Movement founded by Museveni reinvented itse lf in June 1981. The system was endorsed in the national referendum held in June last year.

As is usually the case, the poll outcome has been disputed. Kizza Besigye, who even now considers himself as part of the NRM, has maintained that the electoral process was irregular and that the campaign was marred by violence and intimidation. There is probably an element of truth in these charges. However, some of the charges, like the claim based on some figures released by a radio station that Museveni had polled more than the strength of the electorate, were not true. Curiously, Museveni too says t hat his supporters were intimidated.

However, even observers, who conceded that there were irregularities and instances of intimidation of voters, concluded that the exercise was 'substantially free and fair'. There were about a hundred observers drawn from the Organisation of African Unity , the Commonwealth, the Electoral Commissions of Kenya and Tanzania and a group of independent observers from South Africa.

This description, whose recent currency can be traced to the Report of South Africa's first democratic elections prepared by the country's Independent Electoral Commission (IEC), is perhaps the best that one can expect of any electoral process held under a democratic dispensation. The description, when used by the IEC, caused lot of superior derision in the South African media and the white minority which was until then only accustomed to the perfectly flawless electoral exercise under apartheid. Indeed , only under systems such as apartheid and fascism can electoral exercises be, and have been, totally flawless. For instance, the so-called elections in South Africa held during the apartheid regime, where only about 10 per cent of the total population w ere considered citizens with the actual all-white electorate being even smaller, were little more than family picnics, notwithstanding the contrived virulence of the campaigns. With the contending parties, both for centuries also contending partners in s ettler and colonial theft and truly united on the issue of denying equal rights, nay even citizenship to the majority of the population, there was no way in which the exercise could engage strong passions - except those dictated by greed and desire for t he power and perks of political office.

Under a democratic system, whose innate flaws are also its strongest points, electoral exercises can therefore never be anything but only 'substantially free and fair', not 'absolutely free and fair'.

REUTERS
Kizza Besigye, the defeated presidential candidate.

Although Museveni has been President of Uganda since January 29, 1986, when he was sworn in President following the victory of the National Resistance Army, the armed wing of the NRM, at the end of a 15-year-long guerilla and conventional war and politic al mobilisation, this was only the second time that he had actually contested the election. The first ten years after the end to 'tyranny and dictatorship' - the code words in NRM polemics for the years of Idi Amin (1971-79), Milton Obote II (1979-85) an d Tito Okello (the six months that followed the second ouster of Milton Obote on July 27, 1985) - were devoted to the tasks of putting together a nation and a people ravaged by years of misrule, civil war and attendant evils. A terrible consequence of th ose years, owing to lack of immunisation programmes and the disfigurements wrought by war and landmines, was the emergence of what Museveni describes as a 'new tribe' in Uganda - about two million disabled people in a population of about 22 million.

The major preoccupations during this period were the formation of a 'broad-based' government, the election of local level 'resistance councils' with the stated objective of promoting 'grassroots democracy', and finally the drawing up of a draft new Const itution, after wide public consultation, and its consideration by a Constitutional Assembly elected for the purpose. It was under the provisions of this Constitution, adopted by the Constitutional Assembly on September 22, 1995 and promulgated on October 8, 1995, that the first presidential and parliamentary elections were held in May and June 1996 respectively.

ONE of the peculiarities of Ugandan politics under Museveni is that formally all political parties are banned, although political activities as such are not. As argued by Museveni in his autobiography and political manifesto, Sowing the Mustard Seed: The Struggle for Freedom and Democracy in Uganda (Macmillan, London, 1997), 'social metamorphosis' in a pre-industrial society as in Uganda is manifest not in class formations, as in highly industrialised societies where class formations are in an ad vanced state, but in tribalism and sectarianism. Thus, all political activities in colonial and post-colonial Uganda, despite being articulated by the leaders in conventional and on occasion even in class terms, were actually driven by tribalism and sect arianism.

Being a sophisticated political thinker with a fund of commonsense and moreover as a person who personally led a successful armed struggle and revolution, Museveni is able to argue his case persuasively. Indeed, the admitted achievements of Uganda under Museveni are attributed by him to this absence of political mobilisation through organised political parties which, in the context of Uganda, are bound to be ethnic and religion based.

In practical terms, this has meant that the NRM, being formally not a political party but a 'national movement', has had a free run. However, since Ugandan society is more politicised than many other societies, there is the curious phenomenon of 'non-par ty politics' which is as passionate and as contentious as in societies informed by more conventional political activity - openly organised political parties funded by membership and donations, party newspapers, public mobilisation of supporters on politi cal issues and the like. For instance, although none of the 276 members of Parliament, of whom 214 are elected directly, are members of any political party, everyone knows who among the 20 or so who are known to be not 'Movementists' had and continues to have which political affiliation dating back to the days of the Uganda People's Congress, the Democratic Party and others.

Although the tussle between 'Movementists' and 'Multipartyists' seemed to have been won decisively by the former in the referendum last year, the issue is not dead. One of the problems that Kizza Besigye will have to face if he were to continue with a po litical career is that apart from being opposed to Museveni, he is yet to define himself politically, that is, whether he is still a 'Movementist' as most of his opponents outside the NRM claim, or is he genuinely converted to the 'Multipartyist' cause.

However, there are indications of a return to more normal kind of political activities in Uganda. If, as it seems likely, the Political Organisations Bill currently before Parliament were to be passed before the parliamentary elections due within the nex t two to three months, the elections would be held in relatively free conditions for political parties to openly operate by way of having their own headquarters, collect membership fees and donations, have their own newspapers and the like.

Any assessment of Museveni as he begins his last term as President should necessarily be tentative. The failures are all too obvious. That one of his closest comrades had to come out openly against him, abandoning all the political capital he had accumul ated, is an eloquent commentary on the limitations of the path of 'non-party politics', of the 'non-political party' that the NRM has become.

Museveni has also been criticised for his involvement in the crisis in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). However, Uganda has already begun the process of disengagement. Indeed, one of the points in Museveni's election manifesto was that Uganda's ai ms in the DRC having been achieved, Ugandan troops would be withdrawn even if there was no political agreement. While both Uganda and Rwanda have cited 'security concerns' for their intervention in the DRC, in Uganda's case these are rather more clearly defined, and limited to neutralising the perceived threats from the 'Allied Democratic Forces' (ADF) supposedly owing allegiance to Idi Amin and operating in the west and the north. These aims, according to Museveni, have been achieved with the recent su ccesses against the ADF on both sides of the Rwenzori mountains.

However, even his bitterest critics cannot deny what the country has achieved under Museveni. The achievements include the modest annual economic growth rate of around 4.5 per cent, the close cooperation with other East African countries, the facilitatio n of return of the so-called investor confidence, the containment of tribal and sectarian divides and the restoration of relative social stability, although the underlying tensions manifest themselves occasionally in extreme violence. Indeed, the virulen ce of political opposition to Museveni is just one indication of how far the country has travelled from the dreaded past of 'tyranny and dictatorship'. Above all, there is the remarkable achievement, universally admired, of controlling the HIV/AIDS pande mic. Uganda is the only country in Africa where there is a decline in AIDS cases.

The greatest temptation that Museveni faces, as he embarks on possibly his last term when he is sworn in as President on May 12, is that he may become a victim of that all too prevalent myth of indispensability. In a recent interview to the government-ow ned Kampala daily, New Vision (January 26, 2001), Museveni had this to say in answer to what was clearly a leading question, although asked in the context of the election campaign and the challenge posed by Besigye: "I am the one who has been hand ling the intestines of the sheep. You know, tying the intestines of the sheep is not easy... I am the one who has been tying those intestines and moving forward. Newcomers may not manage to tie these intestines and it may cause a big problem." It is true that Uganda's Constitution bars Museveni from contesting for a third term. But Constitutions have been amended. By an elastic interpretation of the Constitution, President San Nujoma had a third term in Namibia. In Zambia, where presidential e lections are due in November this year, President Frederick Chiluba is encouraging a 'debate' among the faithful whether he should seek another term on the ground that he has actually served only one term since the Constitution was amended in 1996 limiti ng the term of a President to two.

President Jerry Rawlings of Ghana, with whom Museveni has sometimes been compared, resisted such temptations despite his background in armed forces. Is it too early to ring alarm bells in Uganda?