In summary Faridah Lule looks at Museveni’s quotes compared to some great Men of our time, President Museveni said that elections are a matter of life and death, why would it be so if the NRM‘s gospel is prosperity, democracy and unity.

I begin with a quote by Tariq Ramadan who said “national politics and elections are dominated by fear of the other, by insecurity by infection of the body politic by virus of victimhood” if we could only listen to our hearts there will not be any pressures during the elections, we many times decide to ignore nature and act on artificial and manly aspirations. In his speech to the sixth parliament of Uganda, president Museveni said that elections are a matter of life and death, why would it be so if the NRM‘s gospel is prosperity, democracy and unity.

 

Top Museveni young and a father and bottom Museveni after 27 years in power delivering more promises.

Mr. Museveni has been here for the past thirty years as the president of Uganda, up to date he still distributes sacks of money to the locals to attain political popularity especially towards election. If social service delivery was on course, Mr. President would not have to seek popularity through distributing monies. If corruption was not at its peak as it is, Mr Museveni would not have to buy the population for favors. In short, if institutions were working, then His Excellency would never have to rigor to search for political popularity by way of transacting votes for hard cash.

In 1996 for instance, Mr. President promised to tarmac the road from Mpigi to Kabulasoke.It’s coming to twenty years now and this promise has never been honored, recently the minister for finance mentioned it is one of the roads ready for construction. But are the people of Butambala supposed to take Mr. President as an honorable leader?

Elections in Uganda have become heavily monetized one has to sell property to invest in campaigns if they are to stand any chance-it is a do die affair. Many of the mps who have ‘bought’’ their way into parliament for example remain less concerned about their representational role and spend more time conjuring business deals that will redeem the monies they invested in campaigns, may be this is the reason why many of them sleep off when Mr. president is addressing them on the state of the nation year in year out.

Reading the list of bills that were passed into law . I realized that many of them were for instance passed without quorum and others passed through wacky out-maneuvers that rendered rational thinking and discussion irrelevant. why all this? It is because some of those in parliament are disinterested in legislating, representing and playing their oversight roles, why? Because may be they aren’t in the house to perform their constitutional role but to use it as a platform to a mass wealth to run in a subsequent election. Have they learnt this from their leader? Your guess is as good as mine.

Anyway, a vote is like a rifle; its usefulness depends upon the character of the user; our dear politicians, Uganda is like a child and we are the mothers and fathers of this child, we can either make its future brighter or we can choose to lay back and destroy it.

After the president being around for thirty years and not much has changed, we now should aspire and act not only to have a change of guards but also to have that fundamental change that our grandfathers alluded to.

Faridah Lule

CCEDU