How Kenyan politics is shaping Ugandan election campaigns

By Juma Kwayera

The countdown to Uganda’s presidential poll slated for next year is shaping out to be an extension of the ODM and PNU slug-out in 2007, with the incumbent and opposition apparently looking to the Grand Coalition partners for support.

President Yoweri Museveni has reportedly hired consultants from President Kibaki’s PNU to advise him how to halt the rise of his rivals.

Opposition to Museveni rose with entry of former UN Under-Secretary Olara Otunnu into the fray on Uganda People’s Congress (UPC) ticket and fears abound violence may determine the final outcome.

Turbulent elections

Uganda has a history of turbulent elections, but the fact the polls are coming so soon after last year’s post-election violence is eliciting comparisons in terms of intensity and the deployment of paramilitary forces to railroad the outcome in favour of the incumbent.

In a word, Ugandans are borrowing heavily from their neighbours on the east.

"Museveni has drummed up fear into the citizenry. He has used this to force the electorate to think he is indispensable and has been meting out violence using the State security machinery," Dr Otunnu told The Standard on Sunday in an interview.

Otunnu, who held a series of consultative meetings with senior UPC politicians in Nairobi in August, is billed a major threat to Museveni’s bid for a fourth term.

The Uganda leader has carved himself the image of a meddlesome neighbour always interfering with internal affairs of other countries, from Sudan, Kenya to Rwanda and DR Congo.

Ever since he dismissed ODM’s protests of rigging the presidential election in 2007, Museveni has appeared to be closer to PNU and word is rife that Uganda’s governing National Resistance Movement (NRM) looks to PNU for inspiration.

Contacted, PNU Secretary for Legal Affairs George Nyamweya was non-committal about the NRM link, but conceded there were alliances between his party and like-minded organisations in the East African Community.

"We have some relationship, it is difficult to delve into specifics because PNU is a coalition of parties. Such international linkages can only work in circumstances where there are no coalitions," says Nyamweya.

The PNU official says although NRM and PNU consult on matters of mutual interest, "we have not sat down to hammer out anything tangible. However, international political party linkages is a common phenomenon among organisations that share ideologies."

The once cordial relationship between Museveni and Prime Minister Raila Odinga has frozen to the point of the Ugandan leader seizing the slightest opportunity to cast broadsides at the ODM leader.

Such was the case in June when he resorted to epithets to portray Raila’s Luo community as backward following demonstrations in Nairobi and western Kenya over Ugandan soldiers’ invasion of Migingo Island in Lake Victoria.

Otunnu, who served as foreign minister in former military leader Tito Okello government ousted by Museveni in 1986, returned to his native land in August to a frenzied reception in eastern Uganda.

He is Lang’i, a Nilotic community Museveni does not have good relations with. To observers, it will be interesting how the president will repulse Otunnu who is said to have been persuaded by Liberian President Ellen Sirleaf-Johnson to run for president. President Sirleaf-Johnson and at least three other African presidents have since August turned down Museveni’s invitations to Uganda.

The countdown to the poll, however, has all the makings of pre-election contests in Kenya.State-instigated violence has become part of life for Ugandans hoping for a break with the past.

The Ugandan election is a watershed, coming at time when Museveni is facing increasing criticism from a section of Kenyans for appearing to support election rigging. His critics say he is often wary of the ripple effect of Kenya’s opposition politics rubbing off his countrymen and peers.

Few friends

More specifically, the Ugandan president is often said to be wary of Raila, whose energy and dynamism is phenomenal.

Former Nyeri Town MP Wanyiri Kihoro, who lived with Museveni in the early 1980s, says the developing relationship between the NRM and PNU is propped up by ethnic balkanisation, an ideology Museveni favours, to hold onto power. "It is surprising cross-border alliances can be forged based on circumstances such as the ones in Kenya and Uganda, more so by the governing parties. Museveni is not the model you want to emulate.

"For credible alliances, you have to look to South Africa, where ANC has a credible party system, not the Ugandan model that fosters tyranny," says Kihoro, a former political detainee.

This is the scenario Otunnu paints when discussing UPC’s reaching out to like-minded political organisations in the region.

Progressive politics

"We are talking to progressive political formations in the region that share our concept of Pan-Africanism, protection of human rights and the sanctity of life. Museveni’s regime has brutalised Ugandans and turned them into lesser human beings. We have to change this," Otunnu says.

In August, Museveni unleashed the Black Mambas, a notorious Uganda paramilitary unit, to suppress the quest for semi-autonomy by the Baganda.

The protests turned bloody when the Black Mambas descended on the demonstrators and killed 30 people.