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| Bobi wine while in Luweero. Photo via @HEBobiwine |
Why the big crowds at his rallies are misleading indicators
of actual voter behavior at the ballot box
THE LAST WORD | Andrew M. Mwenda | As expected, police have “suspended” the countrywide mobilistion tour by Robert Kyagulanyi aka Bobi Wine. After pulling large crowds across the country, I am sure government got scared. I am sure that even this scare is partly misguided but also partly a result of NRM’s lack of a strategic response. Therefore, from thence henceforth, Bobi Wine’s movements will be closely monitored and restricted. Police will look for every flimsy excuse to stop him in order to contain the growth in his popularity. Yet in trying to stop him, police will give him extra publicity for his cause and help him grow. This is a classic Catch 22 situation.
Since he captured power, President Yoweri Museveni has made
it a point to restrict his opponents from organising against him. He has been
successful at this because he enjoys effective personal control over the
security services. The army, the police and intelligence organisations are
always used as an arm of the president to bolster his politics. Anyone who have
lived in Uganda over the last few decades knows this. What intrigues me,
therefore, is that the opposition have employed the same losing methods to
respond to this challenge for the last 38 years. Are mass matches through towns
the only effective vehicle to mobilise?
The other major problem of the opposition is messaging and
audience targeting. Bobi Wine has a very good intuition of the grievances that
drive many Ugandans, especially male youths in urban areas, against Museveni.
So, when he speaks, he touches their souls. I also think his charisma has made
him the most potent threat to Museveni in an election among his tribemates, the
Baganda. But this has come at the very high price of alienating the rest of
Uganda, except Busoga, from him. The results of the last presidential elections
of 2021 speak clearly and loudly about this.
In the north and north eastern regions where Kizza Besigye
used to score between 40 and 70%, Bobi Wine got only 20% in Acholi, 23% in West
Nile, 25% in Lango and 7.8% in Teso. In Western Uganda where Besigye used to
get 30% of the vote, Bobi Wine got 8% in Ankole,7% in Kigezi, 22% in
Tooro/Rwenzori and Bunyoro 21%. Yet in Buganda where he won, his margins of
victory were not enough to compensate for the loses in other regions. He got
55% in greater Masaka, 65% in Mpigi, 65% in Mukono, 47% in greater Mubende, 53%
in greater Luwero, 76% in Kampala and Wakiso. In Busoga, he won 48% against
Museveni’s 43%.
Therefore, it is clear that the Bobi Wine wave was
restricted to Buganda (his home base) and Busoga (Buganda’s poodle). Even
within Buganda itself, it was restricted to predominantly Baganda districts –
Mpigi 72%, Butambala 73%, Gomba 54%, Masaka 66%, Masaka City 77%, Bukomansimbi
69%, Kalungu 69%, Lwengo 56%, Kyotera 65%, Kalangala 70%, Mukono 72%, Kayunga
64%, Buikwe 65%, Buvuma 65%, Mityana 65%, Kasanda 54%, Luwero 70%, Kampala 73%
and Wakiso 76%. Museveni won in the districts of Mubende, Kiboga, Kyankwanzi,
Nakaseke, Nakasongola, Lyantonde, Sembabule and Rakai.
Bobi Wine’s loses in other regions of Uganda and some
districts within Buganda itself shows that youths, outside urban areas,
actually did not vote for him. Yet this is not a big problem.
The lesson from the above results is that for Bobi Wine to
grow, he needs to reach out to Ugandans outside his narrow circle of ethnic
Baganda and to some extent Basoga. This means he needs to cultivate support
among youths in rural areas, women and non-Baganda and non-Basoga. He needs to
convince people outside his traditional ethnic and demographic support base
that he is presidential.
To do this, Bobi Wine needs to realise that male youths in
urban areas do no constitute the majority of male youths, leave alone the wider
community of Ugandans. Yet from his rhetoric he keeps reciting the grievances
of this group without adding anything except ethnic grievances of Baganda.
Technically it is hard to accuse him of ethnic politics. But within the
cultural context he is speaking, we all know what he is talking about. These
appeals to ethnic sentiment will most likely hurt Bobi Wine as his opponents
will use them to paint him as a Muganda chauvinist. This is the image he needs
to avoid.
Secondly, one of the biggest challenges Bobi Wine faces with
his demographic base on urbanised male youths is their disloyalty. In the last
election, male youths in urban areas had the lowest voter registration share of
any demographic group. Uganda’s median age is 16.7 years. Youth in Uganda
constitute about 70% of the electorate. Yet in all major towns, they are only
35-40% of registered voters. This means only about half of youths register to
vote.
Bobi Wine and his supporters keep complaining that their
votes are stolen without addressing this problem. It is possible that large
crowds that follow him at his rallies reflect public enthusiasm without
reflecting the potential voters on the register.
The Uganda police is scared that the crowds Bobi Wine is
pulling are a sign of his popularity. That is only partly true. Rallies are
misleading indicators of actual voter behavior. Amama Mbabazi pulled large
crowds across Uganda and got only 136,000 votes. Bobi Wine himself pulled huge
crowds in Arua City but got only 28,000 votes in the city, only 8,000 in the
wider district. I am inclined to believe that left on his own, Bobi Wine is likely
to self-destruct and alienate many potential voters. This is because he is
effective at rallying his base but very poor at growing his appeal.
Yet I am also aware that Museveni takes no chances and no
risks on such matters. He is likely to restrict Bobi Wine even if there is a
very low risk of growth in his popularity. Therefore, knowing Museveni’s
consistent strategy, it is incumbent upon the opposition to design new ways and
tricks of mobilisation that do not attract the attention of the police. One would
imagine that they have such tricks already and are using these public rallies
as a decoy to divert police attention from the real place where they are doing
the actual work. But alas, I doubt they have such thinking!
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