Why Uganda needs to reintroduce a broad-based government but this time handle it differently
It is impossible for anyone to convince
Dr. Kizza Besigye and his supporters that he lost the just concluded
elections. It is equally impossible to convince President Yoweri
Museveni and his supporters that they did not win the elections. Besigye
and his supporters see Museveni as an ageing dictator determined to
cling to power at all costs. So they are determined to bring him down at
all costs. Museveni and his supporters see Besigye as a power-hungry
demagogue and sour loser seeking to destabilise the country by
precipitating an urban insurrection. They are determined to crush him.
The lesson from this is simple but
fundamental: truth is not an objective reality but a subjective faith.
Truth is not singular but plural. Truth is socially constructed. States
used to monopolise the manufacture of truth through control of mass
media. Today, social media has empowered impassioned groups to
competitively manufacture their own truth.
Museveni is trying to enforce his truth
using the state’s instruments of coercion and repression. Besigye is
seeking to enforce his truths using discontented urban youths. It is
very unlikely that urban insurrection can succeed in Uganda as it did in
Egypt, Tunisia and Burkina Faso in 2011/2013. To believe it is to fail
to understand the organic character of the government that rules Uganda.
However, even though Museveni will most
likely nip any incipient uprising in the bud, he cannot wish away the
massive discontent of Besigye supporters. Over the next five years, he
is likely to be forced to govern by increasing repression on the one
hand and/or making political compromises that will be costly to Uganda.
For example, afraid to lose any powerful
figure of influence from the different ethnic and religious
communities, Museveni will find it hard to fight corruption or enforce
performance. So we are likely to see increased impunity and
incompetence. He may also try to co-opt some opposition leaders with
money, ministerial, and other appointments. But this will not stem the
anger on the street. It will only alienate such opposition figures from
their popular base.
Secondly, the government will most
likely win street battles against Besigye’s insurrectionists. But it
will not win the war for a stable Uganda. The Besigye side will not
bring the Museveni government down but it will inflict its toll on it.
There will be no winners. Uganda will be the loser in any attempt to
enforce any claim by either side that there is one truth about the just
concluded elections. And it will be costly to the country.
The solution is to return to the core
innovation of the early NRM i.e. abandon winner-take-all politics and
return to the idea of a broad-based government. The first experiment
failed because of the lack of sincerity on the part of the NRM. While
NRM publically denounced partisan politics, all its actions sought to to
grow the party’s base and actively weaken the other political parties
by coopting their members in cabinet to cross to it. This undermined the
spirit of the broad base and turned it into a bread-base.
It is interesting that in Rwanda, the
RPF either borrowed this insight from the NRM or was forced upon it
initially by the Arusha Peace Accords. Whatever the origins, RPF
approached it with sincerity by actively seeking to make partners in the
broad-based government retain their identity. Thus, I have never heard a
case of any member of other political parties crossing to RPF. On the
contrary there is a case of an RPF member who crossed over to the PSD.
This innovation was later written into
the Rwanda constitution of 2003. Regardless of the numerical strength a
winning party can command from an election, it cannot take more than 50%
of cabinet positions. Secondly, once a president comes from one
political party, the speaker of parliament automatically comes from
another party. President Paul Kagame has gone beyond the requirements of
the constitution so that today, the president, the speaker of
parliament, the president of the senate (second inline of succession)
and the prime minister all come from different political parties.
So after elections there are no losers
in Rwanda. All are winners. Secondly, sincerity matters. For example,
the RPF has never used its numerical strength or its control of the
state to emasculate other parties. On the contrary, it actually does its
best to strengthen them; recognising that solving the deep-seated
problems of Rwanda requires a collective effort that is supra partisan
and trans-group.
What post genocide Rwanda teaches us is
that the idea of a broad-based government (or movement system) should
not have been seen as antithetical to multiparty politics as Uganda came
to see it. Rather it is added value to it. In fact, the idea of the
movement system should have been seen as an attempt to avoid the
politics of winner-take-all that we inherited from colonial rule and
which have inflicted grievous harm to many nations of Africa.
The biggest source of problems in Africa
is not the length of period a president serves. I am now inclined to
believe it is attempts by one group to monopolise power. I hope this
election teaches us that the idea of a broad-based government was great
if only it was approached with sincerity and did not seek to supplant
multi-party politics but to complement it. Without a constitutional
broad-based government, it will be hard to carry out electoral reforms
that will minimise accusations of electoral malpractice and all the
quarrels and recriminations that go with them.
Ugandan (and African) political elites
need to recognise that many of the problems we face – slow growth, low
productivity, poor public service delivery, weak position in
international trade, lack of policy independence, etc. – have deep
structural roots. This means that such issues should stand above
partisan politicking. Resolving them will take a very long time that no
president, however long he serves, can overcome them.
In pre-genocide Rwanda, winner-take-all
politics drove politicians anxious to retain power to the extreme of
genocide and national destruction. Broad-based politics has made Rwanda
one of the most peaceful and progressive governments in this world. You
don’t hear of demonstrations in Rwanda. Some people think this is due to
repression. That is nonsense. No amount of repression, however
technologically advanced, can suppress people’s feelings as the
experience of Israel and Apartheid South Africa demonstrates. This is
where our national conversation ought to begin .
amwenda@independent.co.ug
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