By A Correspondent, The London Evening Post
Uganda president Yoweri Museveni fitting the shoes of late dictator Idi Amin.(Photo credits: StrTalk)
March 16, 2014(The London Post) — So because the people of South Sudan want their president to be accountable, Museveni has now taken over with such tactics. Eventually he will be the father of all dictators in this region. He began with Rwanda by killing Juvenal Habyarimana and installing Kagame as his proxy. In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) he killed Laurent Desire Kabila and installed Kabila’s son Joseph as his proxy. But unfortunately, Kabila refused to cooperate.
Museveni is the mastermind of all these tactics. His agenda is simple but ill-fated. He wanted to have proxy presidents in each of the states neighbouring Uganda so he could rule them under the East African Community (EAC) as its president. That is why he is side-lining Tanzania and Burundi from the EAC because Tanzania is quite democratically mature and President Jakaya Kikwete won’t bow to Museveni’s medieval tactics. Besides, Burundi is too far away for him to influence, yet he is at the same time courting the newly formed Southern Sudan to join the EAC since he knows that it is his proxy state given the proxy president he helped put there.
In a way, Kenya is also proxy of Museveni as he helped streamline elections in Kenya during the 2007 elections. When then President Mwai Kibaki had lost the elections to longstanding opposition leader Raila Odinga, Museveni quickly rushed to Kenya to help resolve elections by sharing with their electoral bodies the tactics of rigging yourself back into power. Museveni also did the same with his protégé in Rwanda (Kagame) who had screwed up during the country’s first post-genocide elections in 2003.
After nine years of reconciliation and unity, the Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF) and Kagame were shocked to see that the Rwandese had not voted the man who in his own mind thought he would have been voted. Yet after nine years, the Rwandese felt they had had enough of Kagame, and when he arranged the elections, they just didn’t give him any vote. Kagame was shocked and threw tantrums accusing the Rwandese of not appreciating his efforts and rewarding him by electing him to power after his nine years in office trying to ‘heal and reunite’ the country from genocide.
Museveni had quickly rushed his envoy and corrected his protégé’s childish mistakes, by showing him how elections are organises (rigged). From that time, Kagame has also been a pro at that aspect, and has entrenched himself into the Rwandese presidency. So that is how powerful Uganda is, I mean Museveni is. Because Uganda now controls all those countries by the proxy of our president “giving superior tactics” on how to lengthen their greedy president’s rule. Since power corrupts, you can say that Museveni has corrupted other countries’ presidents through helping them to get power even when their own citizens would have elected otherwise.
That is what is happening in South Sudan. Museveni controls Kiir, and Kiir is taking lessons of ‘poor leadership’ from his mentor. Now when finally some of the core SPLA stood up to make Kiir account for SPLA’s original virtues and goals, Kiir, at the advice of Museveni, instead tried to eliminate them through incriminating their actions with treason. This means they end up eliminated/into life sentences. That way Kiir and his mentor can proceed to rule the country without really being held accountable to their people (dictate). So for many who don’t see the connection among these events, I think you should see how the pattern in the events makes sense.
So you would expect Kiir to take the same path that Kagame of Rwanda, took, which is what Museveni of Uganda took. The path of establishing ruling dynasties in a modern system, beaconed with lengthy holding on to power by the dynasties founding fathers. I think this will fail. Because modern democracy will quickly sense that. None of these can take the path of Africa’s greatest leader, Nelson Mandela. If Museveni wanted to establish a ruling dynasty, he must have been better of allowing regular and moderate changes of leadership both within the NRM and country at large. Chances are high NRM would be capturing a greater electorate over time, and establishing itself as the ruling dynasty of the country (see ANC of South Africa, which genuinely built its legacy over almost a century before getting into power and now remains the most popular in the country).
But Museveni misses the point when he becomes personally clingy to power and the whole concept of establishing a ruling dynasty fails. This means that the room to build such a dynasty still exists because Museveni and his NRM will never gain power with people’s will when Museveni is long gone, unless they continue to use force/military means.
Otherwise, democratically, it is weak. Militarily, the NRM/NRA are strong. But Uganda was not made to be a military country forever. That is why Museveni’s overall dream will fail. Because he missed the point by trying to cling on to power personally instead of allowing the presidential power to diffuse through the entire NRM as one single organ capable of shuffling out credible democratic leaders, instead making himself the beacon of the presidency in the NRM and the entire country. So when he is gone, people can’t trust any of his former members because they never saw him (Museveni) trust them.
Hence NRM will degenerate into an inferior old political party as UPC (read Obote) is today. And at that time, all efforts to revive it will just be a waste of time. History again teaches us this trend. Obote (UPC) was there, and we now know where his party now is. Museveni is here and we can know beforehand where he is going to end with the way events have been unfolding in his rulership over the last three decades. He may just stay/take longer because he is smarter (I mean smarter than Obote/Amin). At least he learned from them not to repeat certain mistakes they made… but [while] he didn’t learn to do things differently altogether; the end is likely to be the same.
Related Article:
- Ugandan Dictator Arrives in Juba Ready to Suck the Blood of South Sudanese
- South Sudan: The Death of Dr. John Garang Reveals Itself – Part I
- Ugandan President Has a Deadly Hand in South Sudan’s Political Crisis
