The Lumbuye ideology and our opposition

Its purpose is to support political goals and catch attention of those few people who are easily being misled

COMMENT | MICHAEL WOIRA | We are now in August and our elections were held in February and the swearing ceremony for the rightfully elected president was also concluded some few months ago. This means the election period was concluded and now is the time for the country to have the peace it requires and also is the time for the leaders we elected to do their work and stop the politicking.

Of course some leaders that got voted understand why they were voted for but some few have never understood why they were voted according to what we keep seeing on social media and on news.

Without any fear of contradiction, I would openly want to say that many of the members of parliament in our opposition are just excited about joining parliament or their populism will never cease to be since many of them are still acting in the same way they did during campaigns.

All throughout the campaigns, there came some human beings who they always said were abroad but became daily commentators of the politics in the country and surprisingly many of our opposition leaders believed in these so called bloggers who could always give misleading information to many of the Ugandans who followed them. The information these bloggers used to give to their audiences was what is sometimes referred to as propaganda.

Propaganda is no longer just an instrument for changing opinions. Now, in our digitally facilitated world, propaganda is a corridor to prompt participation in political conflicts from the safety and comfort of your living room chair. It is also, ironically, now a tool for immediately breaking connections between friends and relatives whose thoughts differ.

On many occasions, this kind of propaganda by the opposition bloggers is intentional and it mainly relies on influence, specifically through the use of misleading information and its purpose is to support political goals and catch attention of those few people who are easily being misled by the statements and information from these bloggers and politicians in the opposition.

The Lumbuye ideology that many of the opposition supporters and leaders use mainly traffics in lies, misinformation, provocative language, and other negative communication to achieve an objective related to a cause, goal or political agenda of which cannot be easily achieved here in Uganda because the wise and straight thinking Ugandans differentiate between propaganda and the truth. So they know where to find true information.

I have been looking at the trend of information dissemination from the time of elections but most of the information from the National Unity Platform has been based on speculations and propaganda and even these senior leaders have always relied on social media for information that they keep propagating without getting facts.

During elections, on many occasions during campaigns, the main page that was used by people power could announce at least two or three people as dead and they thought that doing that would enable them sympathy votes. Lumbuye their chief ideologist could also back them up by disseminating falsehoods and I am so sure this is the reason they miserably lost because no sane thinking Ugandan could allow to be under a government of deceitful leaders and propagandists.

Among the main actors and fake news disseminators was Segirinya but I forgave him for the falsehoods that he traded around. At some point he had to say that someone was pierced in the stomach and all the intestines were out. Maybe as usual he did this to capture attention of everyone so he is voted into power and now that he got what he wanted, he never does propaganda, and he is the only People Power Member of Parliament who is performing which is very okay.

The Lumbuye ideology technique that our opposition is using has been used to convince the public to think, speak, and act in a particular way simply because their leaders are also acting that way. The public has always been invited by these people to jump onto the bandwagon and not be left behind or left out as the rest of society engages in what they perceive to be correct behavior.

But what I have observed in all this, since populist parties and politicians generally lack both internal party structures and discipline, and ideological reason, they are prone to changes in their overall profile. Their radicalism might surge or decline not only during elections but also while in office. And this can be observed by how some of them have started acting games. Someone travelled on government money to go to some country but he announced himself to be in another country doing his political party business. That’s how far the populism card is being used by these opposition leaders of ours.

Right now the National Unity platform (NUP) has been stripped naked but because of its populism tendencies, it’s not ashamed at all, it has gone as far as considering the Lumbuye issue as a party issue and from the top leadership to the last person in the party, all their energies are on rescuing the person they claimed wasn’t belonging to their party, a person who announced one of the cultural leaders dead and a person who has not once or twice announced the President dead. Imagine a whole party considering Lumbuye as their communications person, this is laughable but anyway from the top leadership is where comedy starts.

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Michael Woira is a patriotic Ugandan