COMMENT: Museveni’s personality and governance

Why the personality of the head of a country or a leader at any level is vital and can have great impact

COMMENT | JOSEPH BOSSA | Love him or hate him, Andrew Mwenda is one of the more significant public intellectuals in the East African region. That he appears to have the ear of one or two presidents in the region makes him a man whose thinking should not be ignored.

Because of that, I noticed his article in his column `The Last Word’ titled “Uganda’s myths and realities: Why Besigye can only govern using Museveni’s politics of corruption and patronage”. The article appeared in The Independent of Mach 16-18, 2018. Mwenda makes three important assertions which I wish to respond to.

First, he asserts that President Yoweri Museveni “governs in a particular way more out of the dynamics of a poor multi-ethnic country than out of his personality’’. Then he asserts that, for the elites in government, “corruption is the political currency used to build constituencies of support”. And thirdly, that “. . . in projecting the way Besigye would govern, we have to examine FDC’s social base and how it mobilises”.

His article is an implicit acknowledgement that Museveni is about to be put out of his self-inflicted misery of governing Uganda on the basis of corruption and patronage and the time is ripe to begin the conversation of the post-Museveni era politics. On that Mwenda cannot be faulted.

But I have an issue with him regarding his view of why Museveni has made corruption one of the key pillars of his governance style. I also disagree with Mwenda’s assumed trajectory of the leadership that will succeed this era.

Mwenda assumes that in the event of Museveni’s departure, Besigye and FDC will take up leadership of Uganda. That trajectory is based on Besigye’s current command of the largest mass opposition following and FDC’s being the biggest opposition party in parliament.

Nobody has crystal ball to foretell the future of Uganda’s political leadership. But in my view, to expect that one strong-man (Museveni) will be immediately succeeded by another strong-man (Besigye) is rather far-fetched.

It has taken Museveni over thirty years to consolidate his power, bring under his heel all the institutions that support democracy in Uganda, and to make himself the strong-man that he is today.

Besigye will not have that time to do so (biology will not permit him) and such power as Museveni has amassed cannot be acquired overnight.

We learn from Uganda history that at the end of an old and start of a new epoch, the government that emerges is a coalition of some kind, with no single party or faction strong enough to assume and wield power all by itself in the initial years. At independence in 1962, it was the UPC/KY coalition that formed the first post-colonial government. In 1971 when Idi Amin overthrew the UPC government in a military coup, he co-opted those leaders who had been in opposition to the UPC government and civil servants into the government. In 1979 as Idi Amin was being removed from power, Ugandans in various political formations came together and set up the Uganda National Liberation Front (UNLF) which became the new post-Amin government. When NRM/NRA overthrew the military junta in 1986, the opposition to the UPC 1980-1985 government was co-opted into the new government. That is the more likely path whenever and however the NRM/Museveni government collapses. Hopefully, this time around, it will be a more structured coalition or government of national unity than those we have seen in the past.

Therefore, the question of Besigye; or anybody else, being compelled by circumstances to rule corruptly as Museveni will never arise. If Ugandans have learnt anything from Museveni’s rule, it is not to run a government the way he has. It will forever be a reference for what not to do.

Do the dynamics of politics in Uganda rather than Museveni’s personality dictate the deployment of corruption? Personality and character, although different, are closely related and are often used interchangeably.

A few years ago, I wrote an article on the importance of the character of three office bearers in a country. These are the president, the chief justice and the governor of the central bank. The character of the president sets the political moral tone or “political hygiene” as former Prime Minister Prof. Apolo Nsibambi would call it, of the country. The character of the chief justice does the same for the sense of justice as does the governor’s for the economy. Two illustrations will suffice.

In the United States of America, after the colonies, led by George Washington, had defeated and declared their independence from Britain, there was a clamour to make Washington king of the new nation. He declined. That was a show of character. A man of lesser character would have fabricated the demand for it, if it was not offered. Because of the character of Washington, the founding president, America has continued to be a republic where the president is elected on a regular basis and neither external nor civil war has caused the postponement or cancellation of an election when due.

Still in the United States, when President Abraham Lincoln was president, Congress approved a budget for the refurbishment of the White House. His wife who was in charge of that exercise overshot the budget. Lincoln offered to reimburse the State the excess out of his personal income.

When such a president rallies the citizens against corruption in all its manifestations, they have reason to believe he is genuine and follow him. It is different when close associates of the president are seen every day fiddling with public resources with impunity. The impact of the personality of the head of a country or a leader at any level may not be quantifiable but it is vital and can be great.

Must corruption remain the “political currency to build constituencies of support”? Mwenda wrote at one time that corruption was the foundation on which Museveni’s government was built and without it his government would not stand. That may well be true of Museveni’s government but to extend that reasoning to future governments is plain wrong. Mwenda’s cynical thesis that deployment of corruption and patronage in Ugandan politics is inevitable is hard to accept. The uncharitable interpretation of his thesis is that he is deliberately trying to dampen the fervor of those agitating for a better Uganda by telling them, “Look, Uganda is so firmly welded to corruption that no matter who is president nothing will change. So why bother? Just accept and suffer what is in place.”

But if the personality of the leader is such that it sees nothing unseemly and objectionable to keep power by any means necessary, if all checks and balances that are the pillars of democracy are trampled on with impunity, shattered and are a shadow of what they ought to be, definitely corruption will remain a key tool of governance in Uganda. But I hold a strong view that the personality or character of the president can either encourage and reinforce corruption or curb it. Personality matters and matters a lot.

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Joseph Bossa is the president of the opposition Uganda Peoples Congress party.