ANOTHER UGANDA POLITICAL LEADER LETTING DEMOCRACY DOWN

When facing an adversary who has captured the high ground and is entrenched, it is suicidal to try a full on frontal attack.

With much fewer forces than you, the enemy can defend his position, costing you a lot in life, ammunition and morale. Bombardment from the air or below may help obliterate him, but that is conditional on you having the requisite capacity – airplanes and artillery. If you are considerably weaker and lacking in capacity these are out of the question and you will be better served trying to lay siege wait him out, starve the enemy out, disperse their fire power by attacking on several fronts or infiltrate some of your people behind their lines. The military experts will explain better.

As in war so is life.

Former presidential candidate Robert Kyagulanyi this week formally served notice that he is withdrawing his petition to overturn the results of the 2021 presidential election. In his sworn affidavit Kyagulanyi says he doubts the impartiality of the court, complains that his witnesses are being harassed and that his home detention has hampered his capacity to put up a credible challenge.

Previously

"the National Unity Platform (NUP) has insisted they have incontrovertible evidence that the election was rigged and that their leader was the rightful president of Uganda. They have now decided to take their evidence to the court of public opinion, where they think they will get a more sympathetic ear....

From the beginning, this column didn’t give Kyagulanyi much chance at outright victory. This conviction was sealed when the Electoral Commission (EC) announced that of the 18,500-plus nominees up and down the political system, the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) had more than 18,000 nominees. This was an important revelation because these are the foot soldiers whose influence is then converted into support for the presidential candidates. No footsoldiers, No chance.

These are not the movies where John Rambo or Arnold Schwarzenegger single handedly take on a tank division.  It is like going up against European Champions league champions Bayern Munich short by seven players.

There are some miracles that just don’t happen.

That being said NUP’s sweeping of central Uganda and Busoga was impressive and probably beat even the party’s leadership expectations. Beth is as it may, it was stretch to extrapolate this into a national win.

We waited with baited breath for the evidence the Kyagulanyi camp would adduce to support their challenge.

With the withdrawal from the petition we missed that opportunity to one, have the supreme court rule on it and secondly, for us mere mortals to hear this evidence and make up our own minds. If Kyagulanyi’s withdrawal from the appeal is allowed by the court this will be a missed opportunity.

"The value of appealing against the election – win or lose, is that the supreme court would rule on the process, which ruling would set important legal precedents as well as feed into future electoral reforms. While this is not as sexy as having the supreme court overturning the result, such rulings is how societies or democracies are built....

This column has previously expressed disappointment at Besigye refusing to challenge the election before court for the same reasons.

This refusal by Kyagulanyi to pursue his case is selfish. It tells us like with Besigye, what matters is whether they win or not and to hell with the larger picture.

"Appealing to the court of public opinion is grandstanding, it serves little to advance society. Public opinion is fickle – an indiscrete clergyman or a US battleship docked in Mombasa or Liverpool FC’s slumping ways, easily sway attention from the serious issue of how our country is governed...

To go to court is to put your grievances on paper, saved for posterity, so future generations can look back and see what we did or did not do. I think future generations will take a very dim view of the current goings on.

One of the reasons African civilization has been overrun by lesser versions, has a lot to do with us relying on oral tradition. Try relaying a story down the line and see how after several reiterations the story will have changed beyond recognition. Not a good way to advance society. And hence the importance of the appeal.