Inside Museveni’s life presidency project

While writing his manifesto for the 1996 elections, Museveni promised he would not seek a second term.

Bidandi Ssali and Amanya Mushega, who were then members of Museveni’s cabinet, attempted to convince him to remove that from the manifesto arguing that it was not good to put such promises in writing. If he did not want to seek a second term, they argued, he should just not seek it.

But after the 1996 elections, Museveni addressed a press conference where he said he would not seek a second term.

However, in 2001 Museveni decided to seek the second term. Again, this time, he promised it would be his last.

But two years to the election, in 2003, Museveni kick started a campaign, this time, led by Amama Mbabazi, to amend the constitution and remove term limits.

Muntu attended the 2004 meeting of the National Council in Kyankwanzi, where Museveni again convinced over 400 members the need to lift the term limits.

By now, Muntu says, he had realized that what allowed Museveni to keep playing these games, was the low levels of political consciousness and courage amongst society.

“If leaders were firm and stood up against him, if only 100 members of the National Council or the High Command stood up against him, even discreetly, and said you cannot do that, we don’t support it, he can’t do it,” Muntu says.

“And you wonder why,” Muntu added, “When I was army commander, I always asked soldiers; how can you be courageous before live bullets on the battle front and not courageous before an officer making mistakes and putting your life at risk”.

Former Museveni cabinet insider, Miria Matembe, also told The Independent in an earlier interview that Museveni used the same trick in 2000, when he asked his inner circle to support him against Kizza Besigye.

Matembe recalled that in 1999, Besigye had written a memo which pitted him against President Museveni. So when Besigye declared his candidacy in 2000, Matembe and other Banyankole leaders under the chairmanship of the late former Prime Minster and Museveni confidante, Eriya Kategeya, called him and asked him to give Museveni five more years as his “last five year term”.

According to Matembe, Besigye swore to them that Museveni was going to amend the Constitution to remove term limits and not retire after five years.

“I personally told Besigye in that meeting, please don’t read bad motives in people,” Matembe told The Independent in an interview, “I know this man loves the constitution, he made it, and he always condemns people who stayed in power for so long. I don’t think he can change the constitution. “My dear, I was wrong,” she added.

In 2004 at Kyankwanzi, Matembe says, she got the shock of her life when Museveni called for the removal of term limits.

“I said, well, I have been moving with an impostor,” she said.

Another person who was caught up in misreading Museveni is former Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi. He was central in the machinations of 2005 but would get entangled in 2015, ahead of the 2016 elections.

It all became clear when Mbabazi, who was at the time Prime Minister and ruling party Secretary General, started plotting to contest against Museveni. Mbabazi, who was believed to have used his positions as SG and PM to build a network and amass a war-chest respectively, was portrayed to be strategising to upstage Museveni during the Party Delegates Conference that elected the party flag-bearer.

Museveni loyalists started to mobilise in exactly the same way as they are doing with the age-limit campaign; in a mix of secret and public moves with Museveni always appearing uninvolved.

Publicly, a previously little-known young woman called Evelyn Anite started publicly pushing for what was called the “sole candidature” of Museveni.

Behind the scenes, more powerful forces softened officials of all the party organs, the Central Executive Committee, the National Executive Committee and finally the National Conference. In some of the meetings, whenever, his attack dogs went for Mbabazi, Museveni would always rise to defend him.

Finally, at a February 2015 meeting in Kyankwanzi, Anite knelt on the floor to present a resolution to have Museveni as the party’s sole candidate for the 2016 polls. In a master stroke, Anite’s camp got party members to sign a document in support of Museveni. Mbabazi, who always sat in the front row, was cornered. He signed the Anite document. Later, he ran as an independent.

But had Mbabazi and Matembe both listened to more senior leaders in the movement, they would have not been surprised. One such leader is former Prime Minister Kintu Musoke.

Kintu Musoke was a senior official in the Uganda Patriotic Movement (UPM), which under the leadership of Museveni had contested and lost the December 1980 election t0 Milton Obote’s UPC.

Museveni had threatened to launch a rebellion if UPC rigged the elections.

After the election, the UPM top leaders met at Musoke’s house near Kampala to forge a way forward.

Kintu Musoke told journalist Charles Onyango Obbo what transpired at that night meeting. “Museveni hardly spoke,” he said.