Uhuru Kenyatta, Yoweri Museveni tell off opposition for attacks

President Uhuru Kenyatta addressing a special session of the Uganda Parliament in Kampala Uganda in Kampala on 10th August, 2015.

President Uhuru Kenyatta yesterday spoke about the steps Kenya and Uganda have taken in bolstering development and unity but also recounted the bad experience under colonialism, impatience with the Opposition and optimism for a more secure and prosperous East Africa.

Tracing the troubled history of the two States under colonial rule and the tedious task of unifying scarred and impoverished nations, Uhuru determined that the African people must be left to chart their own ‘democratic destiny’ and experience.

“Yet even as we recognise this truth, we know from bitter experience, in recent global history, that attempts to impose democracy have led to mass atrocity and State failure,” he said, noting that “there is no appropriate one-size-fits-all approach, nor should there be attempts to turn countries into similar copies.’’

Whereas Uhuru was emphatic African problems should be dealt with in an African way, while extolling the beauty of East African integration, his remark that the Opposition must not always criticise the government as a way of ‘deligitimising’ it struck a familiar chord in Uganda's politics.

“Even as we all tread different roads, our destination is to become full democracies whose leaders are subjected to the people’s will as it is expressed by the ballot,” declared Uhuru.

President Museveni, who spoke before welcoming President Kenyatta to deliver his historic speech to Uganda's Parliament, stuck to his usual promise to neutralise the Opposition, when he declared that he was working on how to reduce its numbers in the next elections.

His statement stirred memories of the beatings, humiliation and arrests his government has subjected Opposition leaders to, especially his perennial rival Dr Kizza Besigye.

Uhuru chose the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM)-dominated Ugandan parliament to lecture Opposition leaders in Kenya and the region, at the end of his three-day State visit to Uganda.

While acknowledging the Opposition’s role to keep governments in check and offer alternative policies, he claimed its leaders ran the risk of turning into foreign lackeys and undermining democratically elected governments through their frequent criticism of those in power.

It was an attack that resonated with his host, who sat behind the Kenyan leader as he delivered the stinging rebuke, for it is a familiar line from his own nearly three-decade rule in Uganda.

“Kenya has travelled this difficult path. At great cost and pain, we have worked to internalise the principle that political opposition is not enmity. However, this is not only a principle limited to those in power. The opposition itself must not exploit democratic freedoms and its legitimate platform to try and delegitimise government and undermine the peoples’ will,” he said.

Uhuru described the responsibility of the Opposition thus: “It should be patriotic, and loyal to the stability and effectiveness of government even as it opposes policies and offers different remedies.”

His comments about ‘patriotism’ and ‘loyalty’ may however, have been directed at Kenya’s opposition leaders, whom he recently accused of being ‘petty’ during a recent meeting with American President Barack Obama.

This was after the leaders, led by the Coalition for Reforms and Democracy leader Raila Odinga, asked Obama to be tough on the Jubilee government on issues such as corruption, which they argued had permeated every sector of the economy.

“Democracy does not mean that we should make political and civil society careers of using distortions, narrow lens and even outright lies to paint our countries as failures. It does not mean campaigning on crude ethnic terms to divide people, and even trigger violence so as to be rewarded with government positions,” Uhuru said towards the end of his speech.

It was the first time that President Kenyatta was addressing a foreign Parliament since he was elected in 2013.

While CORD is Kenya’s main political opposition, Uganda’s opposition is composed of a conglomeration of political parties led by the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC).

Museveni has often accused its former leader, Dr Besigye of being a Western stooge.

The President’s speech before the 385-chamber parliament is likely to have been music to Museveni's ears as he is seeking re-election. Museveni’s run-ins with the opposition in previous years, have seen him fight off accusations of seeking to hang on to power indefinitely.

US President Obama, in an address to the African Union as he wound up his visit to Kenya and Ethiopia recently, criticised long-serving African rulers who had even resorted to dismantling constitutional term-limits to hang on to power.

Obama cited Burundi where President Pierre Nkurunziza was announced victor for a third term despite controversy over whether he was eligible to run again.

In Rwanda, the parliament has backed a plan to scrap presidential terms and allow President Paul Kagame to run for election in 2017.

President Kenyatta tactfully sought to go round these developments by arguing that the region should be wary of ‘imposed’ democracy, adding that different countries have peculiar historical circumstances that cannot be ignored. Although his visit mainly focused on regional integration, his speech to Ugandan MPs indicated that regional integration cannot be divorced from politics.

He sought to parry away comparisons between Kenya’s democracy and that of Uganda, which scrapped the two-term limit in 2005 when the constitution was changed to allow for multi-party politics.

 

The Ugandan leader came under fire for setting a bad precedent for other regional leaders such as Burundi’s Nkurunziza who has sought a third term amid opposition from his critics.

Museveni is currently facing internal party competition from his former Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi who is seeking the party’s ticket for the country’s presidency. Yesterday, Uganda’s Opposition leader in Parliament Waffula Ogutu sat silently in the green-carpeted chamber.

Although he was acknowledged by both Kenyatta and Museveni, the Ugandan leader could not resist a jibe. “My duty is to ensure that there is less opposition during the next parliament,” Museveni said in his speech.

He thanked the Kenyan President for ensuring smooth flow of goods from the port city of Mombasa to Kampala under the single-customs union protocol, adding that under Kenyatta’s leadership, the regional business climate has improved.

Uhuru, who was accompanied by First Lady Margaret Kenyatta, inspected a guard of honour at the Parliament Buildings before walking into the chamber to deliver his speech that also touched on regional security and the role of the youth in development.

“I have no doubt that it is not gold or oil or other precious minerals buried in our soil that will make us wealthy. In our young population, we have the world’s most precious resource,” the President noted.

There was sense of déjà vu when he launched into the fight against corruption, a theme he has often delved into during his State of the Nation addreses to the Kenyan parliament.