Police violence scares voters

Museveni satisfied

Augustine Ruzindana of the opposition party FDC says if the violence scares voters away from the polling booths, Museveni is satisfied because it means there will be no change through elections.

“Conventional wisdom has always shown that low voter turnout in elections in Africa is always in favour of the status quo,” Ruzindana told The Independent in an Interview.

He pointed at the widespread violence by security forces on the opposition candidates in the recent Tanzania election.

Even as it was the most violent election Tanzanians have witnessed, the recent election saw the incumbent President John Pombe Magufuli win with the highest percentage of votes ever at 84% and the ruling party sweep nearly all elective positions leaving the main opposition party with only one seat in parliament. This implies that the East African region’s second biggest economy has literally become a one party state.

Ruzindana says the violence has a long-lasting effect.

“Voters realise that participating in an election is a wastage of time,” he says, “That is the lesson for the Ugandan opposition.”

“What happened in Tanzania can happen in Uganda that is to say, once the voters come to the conclusions that it is a waste of time to vote the opposition which cannot effect change or serve their interests, they abandon the effort of change,” he says.

He adds: “The Tanzania election should give some powerful lessons to participants in the elections in Uganda. In Tanzania there were 15 political parties separately participating in the elections and their almost three million votes have not translated into parliamentary seats. Previously there were opposition seats in Zanzibar, Kilimanjaro, Arusha, Kigoma, Dar es Salaam and a few other places but there are none now.”

As a way forward, Ruzindana argues that for the opposition to be attractive “they must show that they have a realistic chance of winning.”

“If this is not clearly possible, voters not supporting the status quo stay away. Some of those in support of the status quo stay at home knowing that their side will win whether they vote or not,” he says. Ruzindana says currently, the collective opposition strategy in Uganda is clearly a losing one because they are not united.

“In areas like Kampala and Wakiso where they could register parliamentary wins, they have multiple strong candidates against each other,” he says.

There have been voices calling on the opposition to boycott the Museveni organised elections arguing that such a move would focus on creating a conducive electoral environment without violence. Proponents of this idea argue that fair electoral reforms that would level the electoral playground would help deliver a free and fair election.

But others point at experience elsewhere on the continent to show that election boycotts do not usually have much impact as the incumbent often create fictitious opposition parties or candidates to give a semblance of electoral competition.

In the recent election in Ivory Coast, for example, the opposition there boycotted the presidential election leaving Alassane Ouattara to compete against himself.

The election according to observers was characterised by deadly violence orchestrated by the country’s security forces. In response, President Ouattara deployed the military to put the main opposition figure under house arrest.

Mwambutsya Ndebeesa, a history lecturer at Makerere University, argues that using the military to solve political problems as is the case in most African countries is not sustainable in the long run.

“In the case of Uganda, I don’t think teargasing, arresting and beating political opponents on the streets is a sustainable way of resolving the political impasse in Uganda. A military solution to a political problem is not sustainable.  We need to embark on a negotiated political settlement,” says Dr. Ndebesa.

The Electoral Commission has set Jan. 14, 2021 as the date for electing both president and members of parliament; but the brutal arrests of some presidential nominees has sparked debate on the election environment.The candidates are already constrained by campaigning in a much restricted space under COVID-19 pandemic control measures.

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