UGANDA’S EVOLVING POLITICAL PICTURE

This week former Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) party president General Mugisha Muntu announced that he was decamping from the party he helped found because of a difference in opinion of how they should proceed.

Muntu, field commander before he headed the Uganda People’s Defence Forces (UPDF), believes like any good general, you need to build up the structures and capacity of the party if you to have any real chance of wrestling power from Museveni. This does not take away from the work of firing up the base with constant attacks on the ruling party and government.

The other tendency championed by Colonel Kizza Besigye, is to carry the party along by force of will and take on the government head on in the streets and in the media.

"It’s an interesting dichotomy and not unlike the differences by the various fighting forces trying to overthrow the Uganda government in the 1980s...

There was the National Resistance Army (NRA) and its determination to fight a protracted war against the company. Building its capacity unseen in the jungles of Luwero, carrying out opportunistic attacks against government installations for the materiel they would throw up than for the publicity value and avoiding at all cost direct confrontation with the then superior forces of the Uganda National Liberation Army (UNLA).

On the other hand were those like Uganda Freedom Movement (UFM) led by Andrew Kayiira, banking on a speedy victory following the 1980 election, thought they could score some quick hits that would demoralise government soldiers precipitating mutiny and even coup.

The results of either strategy is now history.

It’s the classic case of the tortoise and hare. The plodding, boring tortoise seems out of its depth against the hare with its speed, aerodynamic construction and affable character. In the race the flashy overconfident hare is eventually pipped to the finish by the steady, tenacity of the tortoise.

No need assigning real life players to this analogy. It is clear for all to see.

No sooner had we absorbed the Muntu defection than it is reported that he might be linking up with flavour of the month Robert Kyagulanyi and his People Power movement.

If true, it’s obvious that the marriage is not one made in heaven. Will the measured methods of Muntu seat well with the youthful exuberance of Kyagulanyi? Who will forgo their ambition for the other? Which side will have the upper hand the more structured organisation that Muntu brings with him or the raw, spontaneous, unbridled energy of People Power?

"It’s clear that Muntu has left one fight in the FDC he may very well find again in an association with Kyagulanyi...

But in the greater scheme of things the movement in the opposition is part of a larger dynamic being fuelled by a stuttering economy and rapidly changing demographic.

Earlier this month the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) released its Human Development Index, which scores countries according to such measures as life expectancy, infant mortality, access health services, education and water – the citizens’ standard of living. Uganda with a score of 0.516 came in 162 out of 189 countries. Never mind that we have improved our score a whopping 66 percent since 1990 – 0.311 when the HDI was first measured.

However what is driving our politics is that even this low score is not evenly distributed. When you account for inequalities our HDI score plummets to 0.370. Meaning that the majority of people are not enjoying the general improvements in the living conditions that blanket statistics like GDP growth suggest.

This is translated into a clamouring for change in our politics by a growing constituency, even for change’s sake.

This last point fits in very well with the changing demographic in the country.

"We now have more than 80 percent of the population below the age of 35, meaning none of these know anything about the “bad, old days”  and they don’t even learn about them in their history classes.

They have grown up in a third wold economy but more exposed than any generation before them, to first world lifestyles. They know better and they are impatient that that becomes their reality. Yesterday...

They have identified the status quo – not just the government, but all authority figures and power structures, as the cause of the current malaise. And they will lurch onto anyone will give them hope that they can overturn it.

This sea change is inevitable and unescapable. Muntu and Kyagulanyi are trying to feed off it. It is already knocking incessantly on the NRM’s fortified walls.