The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
On trade unions she passed a wave of reforms reducing their power and made them liable for damages incurred during ‘illegal’ strikes. With healthcare she encouraged the use of private providers and outsourced many of the functions of the National Health Service in a drive for what she called efficiency savings. To many of her left wing critics, handing over their treasured assets to the private sector was tantamount to corruption. For years, they fought back by defending these old programmes.
For many years the Labour Party was unable come to terms with the fact that however passionately they felt about these entitlement programs, the British public did not feel so; it was their core base that cared. Consequently, the Conservative Party kept winning. It took them 15 years in the political wilderness before Labor could elect Tony Blair, abandon its class warfare politics, rethink its message and reposition itself from the left to the center to get another chance at coming into government. A similar repositioning took place in America through Bill Clinton after the reforms of Ronald Reagan caused a major realignment in American politics.
The lesson of Museveni’s 2011 victory is similar. There has been a major change in public perceptions about politics. The old message of attacking Museveni for the corruption, nepotism and incompetence of his government is stale. It still finds passionate support amongst his most ardent critics; but its effect is to appeal to the base without growing it. It seems that many Ugandans have moved on; for Museveni’s greatest triumph has been to make these failures banal, routine and normal. Few are shocked by them anymore.
For example, during the mid 1990s up to the mid 2000s, big exposes of corruption scandals sold newspapers across the country. Not anymore. Newspaper editors have learnt to keep corruption off the front page; only fronting it when it is tied to internal power struggles inside the NRM as it was in the Temangalo land saga. Telling Ugandans about 100 ghost hospitals or that civil servant X has stolen a huge chunk of money is like reporting that the Pope is Catholic – many would say “what do you expect from a pig but a grunt?”
By sinking to the very bottom of moral depravity, Museveni has inadvertently made Ugandans abandon the high idealism they had in politics. He has tolerated the worst forms of corruption, so graft is now normal. He paid MPs to remove term limits thereby exposing the major shortcoming of our political class. Now bribing parliament has also become normal. There is little more Museveni can do that will shock voters. Because he has reduced the standard of political morality to its lowest, he has caused a fundamental shift in the political landscape of this country.
The net result of this process has been double: On the one hand it has made many formerly public spirited individuals abandon their idealism and join him and his apparatchik in official loot – witness how many former DP, UPC and FDC officials have crossed over to the NRM; while on the other, it has made others so cynical of politics that they have lost faith in it as a vehicle for improving the lot of the people. The latter group has opted out of voting, a factor that explains why Museveni is able to be reelected president with only 38 percent of the total registered voters.
The opposition and other critics can no longer profit from the old attacks on Museveni – they are banal. It has to adjust and make a different argument lest it sounds like a broken record – and that was Besigye’s problem in this election. There is need for a new political realignment in this country, a new repositioning and a new vision. The old attacks on Museveni for corruption and nepotism worked well in 2001 and 2006; and they still work well in appealing to the already converted. But they resonate less the undecided in 2011 and are unlikely to work in 2016.
Appealing to the base that is already passionate in its opposition to Museveni is not enough; attracting the most disinterested voters makes all the difference. If 80 percent of Ugandans had voted, it would have meant another 2.7m votes, most of which I suspect would have voted for the opposition thus giving it 5.2m against Museveni’s 5.4m. If you add the 330,000 spoilt votes, Museveni would not have won in the first round – and he cannot survive a second round. It is not that these people are intimidated; they are apathetic. The challenge for the opposition is to make them enthusiastic to vote.
But the opposition that is largely pro Besigye is hostile to any realistic message; it is stuck in desiring to listen to its own echoes. It only understands the language of 2001 and 2006 that attacks Museveni’s venality but which is losing resonance with many new voters. This section of the opposition has thus disarticulated itself from the new mainstream of supporters in favour of its base. It is in the same trap at the British Labour Party in the 1980s.
And the message will not be about fighting corruption by jailing the thieves, but about removing the state from provision of public services and restricting its role only to financing them. If Besigye is Uganda’s Neil Kinnock or Michael Dukakis, then our country needs a Tony Blair or Bill Clinton; a leader who will move to the centre by pick fights with his extremist supporters on the left in order to win the more independent minded voters. Who will stand up to this new challenge?
amwenda@independent.co.ug
