Behind Museveni’s ‘Sectarianism’ talk

Museveni’s speech bizarre?

It was not only Golooba-Mutebi who found Museveni’s victory speech quite puzzling. Bernard Sabiti, a researcher and public policy analyst also found it strange.

“For someone who had just won an election, I found his speech quite bizarre,” Sabiti told The Independent on Jan.21.

“I think President Museveni feels stung by the fact that this young man almost wiped out all the support he has enjoyed in Buganda for all these years,” he said, “That is why he thinks Bobi Wine brainwashed many youths in Buganda to vote for him.”

Sabiti told The Independent that he cannot compare Bobi Wine’s feat to Kabaka Yekka because beyond tribal heritage, there were many other reasons why Baganda voted for Kyagulanyi.

“It would be a big mistake to read into Bobi Wine’s win in Buganda using tribal lenses,” Sabiti told The Independent. Apart from Paul Ssemogerere in the 1996 presidential election, Museveni had never faced off with a formidable Muganda presidential candidate like he did this time.

Sabiti explained that there has been a growing antipathy towards the NRM party in Buganda over the recent years.  “That is why the Baganda especially in urban areas have been voting for anyone who presents the biggest threat to the incumbent.”

Sabiti thinks the Baganda would still have voted for anyone who presented the biggest threat to President Museveni irrespective of the candidate’s ethnicity.

But Patrick Wakida, the executive director of Research World International, a Kampala-based polling agency, told The Independent on Jan.21 there is no doubt that voting in the just concluded presidential and parliamentary election was patterned along ethnic lines.

Wakida, however, quickly argues that it is wrong for Museveni to talk about Baganda being sectarian when you have a polling station where Museveni almost scores 100% in western Uganda.

Political analysts say voting patterns are complex phenomena which result from an interplay of varying factors in different circumstances. Charles Bwana in his paper: “Voting Patterns in Uganda’s Elections: Could it be the end of the National Resistance Movement’s domination in Uganda’s elections?” published in the online journal Les Cahiers d’Afrique de l’Est (The East African Review) in September 2009 says both objective factors that cut across a population and subjectively held sentiments determine the pattern of voting and the choices made in an electoral contest.

Bwana for instance attempted to contextualize the history of voting and emergent voting patterns since the NRM took over power in 1986. He looked at five national elections that have been under the NRM; elections in 1989, 1994, 1996, 2001 and 2006. In his analysis, he found that the greater part of northern Uganda had consistently voted against Museveni because of Museveni’s failure to bring peace.

One very consistent voting pattern is that in most of the elections held in Uganda, the northern part of the country has always voted against the NRM candidates and President Museveni. This is because in the early years of the NRM government, the NRA (now UPDF) went on a collision path with the population in northern Uganda resulting in the proliferation of insurgency groups.

“This instability and insecurity in northern Uganda has been the overriding factor for the indifference for the NRM and therefore the tendency to vote for the opposition candidates,” Bwana said, “On the other hand, the western and the central parts of the country have regularly voted in favour of President Museveni largely because of wanting to maintain the status quo of considerable peace and prosperity.”

Bwana also argues that Uganda’s old aged population appears to credit the NRM for maintaining some level of stability in Uganda as opposed to the period of political and constitutional instability during much of post-independence Uganda. On the other hand, the young voters judge the NRM not in comparison with Uganda’s past but on the basis of international standards of good governance and democratic practice.

Rather than look at Uganda’s checkered past and applaud the NRM, the young generation of voters has tended to rationalize about current problems affecting them and the failure on the part of the NRM to perform to their expectation.

In fact, Siranda says, a good portion of voters in this year’s election were young people who are not moved by the Luweero history. But also, Siranda adds, Museveni has made many unfulfilled promises to not only the people of Buganda but other regions of the country including Bukedi in eastern Uganda. This was a protest vote.

“This was a vote against unfulfilled promises.”

Just days to the election, Mwambutsya Ndebeesa, a lecturer of political science at Makerere University told URN that Kyagulanyi had the “home advantage” this time. “It is not going to be business as usual as it has been in the last 35 years,” he said.

Mwambutsya said even though the NRM still boasted of a sizeable support base, political support in Buganda had since shifted towards the opposition. Mwambutsya hinted that he would not rule out ethnic voting patterns and moods and emotions.

“Bobi being a Catholic and a youth from Buganda will obviously give him an advantage. He also has not carried the baggage of having been part of the NRM in the past like other candidates who have challenged Museveni before like Mugisha Muntu, Benon Biraro, Kizza Besigye, Amama Mbabazi and Gen. Henry Tumukunde from western Uganda. That will give him an advantage over the other challengers of Museveni.”

Museveni’s 10-Point Programme

When Museveni assumed power in 1986, he unveiled the 10 Point Programme which he said, traced Uganda’s problems to the fact that previous political leaders had relied on ethnicity and religion in decision making at the expense of development concerns. For decades, Uganda became polarized along tribal, religious and ethnic grounds.

The 10-Point manifesto condemned “sectarian, religious and tribal cleavages” as manufactured divisions claiming that “one’s religion, colour, sex or height” is not a consideration where new members are welcomed in the National Resistance Movement. Museveni said it was imperative to start growing the seed of unity and anti-sectarianism among Ugandans.

Among the solutions Museveni thought could help cure the sectarian tendencies amongst Ugandans was the adoption of a no-party system of government. That formula had worked until 2005 when Uganda returned to multi-party democracy.

In his 2005 paper, “‘Populism’ visits Africa: The Case of Yoweri Museveni and No Party Democracy in Uganda,” Giovanni Carbone says Museveni’s argument for a no-party model was that western representative democracy could hardly succeed in countries like Uganda where ethnic, linguistic and religious fragmentation combined with pre-industrial development and the lack of a modern class structure were a recipe for disaster. Has Museveni’s winning formula turned full circle?

Going forward, Wakida says, there are two emerging narratives. He says there is a group of people who think this country needs a transition while there is another group who think the status quo should remain.

For Siranda, it is important that a person who wins a hotly contested race calms down a nation which is at the moment too divided.  President Museveni needs to come up with harmonising and reconciliatory messages and glue back the country, Siranda says.

“He needs to drop the arrogance and boy-headism. The more he talks about the sectarian tendencies, the more the people will coalesce around their communities.”

For Ibrahim Ssemujju Nganda, the FDC spokesperson, it would take a pretender not to accept that “things are happening in this country.”

“Instead of hiring crowds to celebrate his victory, he should be consuming the results the way others are consuming them,” Ssemujju said, referring to Museveni’s choreographed stopovers along the Kampala-Mbarara highway on Jan.21 as he returned to Kampala from his country home following his victory which will now keep him in power  until 2026.

In 2026 Museveni will have ruled Uganda for 40 straight years. It will be a remarkable milestone for a president who once derided African presidents for overstaying in power.

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