Like others before it, Kizza Besigye’s play book of invoking ICC’s involvement in Uganda’s political matters is dead wrong.
The loser in four of the last consecutive presidential elections hired musketeer, Erias Lukwago of the shadow-way and fool-hardy “peoples’ government,” to address the press where the later told journalists of how they were “dragging President Yoweri Museveni and cohorts (including Generals Elly Tumwine, Peter Elwelu and Don Nabasa) to the ICC over what they called “crimes against humanity.” And they want two million signatures of Ugandans to support their indolent petition.
While Uganda’s democratic political space has burgeoned to unprecedented levels, a plus to the Museveni’s ablest hands, vitalizing industry and magnanimity that helped to repudiate extra judicial killings as well as the insecurities of Idi Amin and others, some with pygmatic political stature, the duo of Kiiza Besigye and Erias Lukwago included, are still failing to lay aside: party bias, small prejudices and their hearts and hands are not in tandem with the rhythm of the Ugandan voter.
The duo’s latest outrageous convulsions over ICC come in the wake of cut-throat competition between all sorts of debased scoundrels for the opposition’s soul pulling in all directions: a pack of factions from FDC, UPC, DP, red-hooded Bobi Wine followers, civil society etc.
The timing of the duo’s spasms is significant because they are aimed at the other elements of the opposition, so a coup of sorts by the duo is absolutely necessary to upstage the Magere red-hooded group, the DP which has refused to relinquish the IPOD leadership to FDC and all other formations that may eat into the forth-coming basketful of donor funds for the opposition’s participation in the 2021 general elections. It is about another cash cycle and bonanza.
Kiiza Besigye’s cabal wants to secure its number two slot in the 2021 poll results and that can only be done by upstaging other less sagacious political groupings that have over time been gnawing into his space, driving him into hermit hibernation for a while.
They hope that can be done by recycling the old and fossilized song of dragging President Yoweri Museveni, a man who stands both in political and natural height above the Besigyes of this world, to the ICC.
Kiiza Besigye’s oversized cabal that has kept a stranglehold on the rest of the opposition fearing that it could be outsmarted at the 2021 polls, since what began as a trickle now has turned into a tidal wave, is in over-drive; in invoking the ICC, they believe, they will appease both the bustling international fund donors towards their 2021 campaign as well as their Ugandan constituency which has frozen at 27 per cent. But that assertion contains an uncomfortable truth namely: other opposition groups seem to have gnawed deeper into their bastion.
And the “evidence” to present to the ICC? Fulminations like state inspired violence, torture, suppression and extrajudicial killings! Either this is a general lack of adequate intellectual resources or intellectual dishonesty on the part of the duo.
They are trying to turn their political incompetence at the earlier polls into an ICC matter to reinvent themselves before the next polls. Over the past two decades, Kiiza Besigye has, yes, cobbled together his support base, but he hasn’t insulated it against President Yoweri Museveni’s magnanimity, tireless energies, rare wisdom a combination he has used to convince many out FDC’s chaotic conclave.
But our country will always have hair-brained dregs who choose international treacherous paths as part of our national solution which ideally is a colonial mentality on the part of Kiiza Besigye, the recycled dictator of the opposition.
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Henry Mayega is the Deputy Head of Mission, Uganda Embassy, Beijing, China.
