Failure to address the succession question has left us seated on a time bomb which undoubtedly got invigorated at Namboole!

Mr President, in February 2007 I wrote in these very pages warning you against firing your guns empty to revitalise the political potency of a few individuals within your government at the expense of the pedigree of NRM.

My letter titled, "The great Garuga summit" (see The Sunrise February 23rd - March 2nd 2007), followed an interesting incident when Prof. Gilbert Bukenya hauled you to his residence at Garuga to dispel a media rumour that you were going to sack him as Vice President!

Bukenya invited you to chair a caucus meeting for MPs from Buganda to discuss a sack rumour! All daily newspapers of Friday February 16, 2007 had, as their lead story, headlines along the lines, "Museveni dispels VP sack rumour", or "I am not sacking VP, says Museveni".

Whatever I wrote in response to that drama is on the shelves. But the reason I recalled this was because whatever I wrote has come to pass. I said, it was so un-Museveni to find you responding to media speculations, more so speculations engineered a paper as abysmal as the one that published it. And as if that didn't astonish enough, you had to travel to the residence of the person whom you were rumoured to be preparing to sack to explain yourself.

I found this very un-Museveni because the Museveni I know enjoys his power to the fullest so much so that he owes no one any explanation especially in public. Also, the Museveni I know detests sectarianism with relish that it was unthinkable for him to attend a caucus meeting for one ethnic group seating at the residence of his junior.

So, Mr President, I knew that it was Bukenya who, in his war against the "political mafias" he had identified in 2005, embroiled you in that useless fight to prove his mahogany stance to his rivals. And you surrendered your pedigree for one reason; you had great hope in your Vice President as a political ally and potential successor. You were so much obsessed with Bukenya that you were ready to do whatever it takes to prove to him and his growing band of supporters that he was your preferred cadre.

Bukenya disappoints

We are actually told by those who know you better that this is one of your key weaknesses -- once impressed by someone you fully surrender your all to them until they disappoint you.

And disappointment was all you got a year later when in June 2008 Bukenya penned a book, "Through Intricate Corridors to Power," and invited Kabaka Ronald Mutebi to launch it at a time when Mengo, owing to the land amendment bill debate, had declared "war" against your government.

In the book, Prof. Bukenya had written thus, "Buganda culture is very interesting and trying to erase it from people's minds would be futile. It would be like trying to end a lineage…President Obote had tried his best to remove this living history, and his overthrow was the climax of getting rid of a reviled being."

Readers of Bukenya's book struggled to avoid relating the abovementioned statement to coincidence because while delivering the State of the Nation Address on June 5, 2008, you had warned traditional leaders against "sabotaging the country's economic development". You said that traditional leaders failed to defend Africa against colonialism and that this was a direct vote of no confidence in them.  

Mbabazi rides on Bukenya's weaknesses

Then the bigger shocker was to come in 2009 when Prof. Bukenya went to Lubiri to attend the coronation anniversary of his 'best friend' the Kabaka. At the function he, contrary to what you had announced on WBS TV that there were no more negotiations between Buganda and central government over federal system of governance, assured the Baganda that he was ready to negotiate with them on the issue of federo and other grievances. He also thanked the Kabaka for uniting the people of Buganda, whom Mengo had accused you of dividing.

After that I knew the honeymoon between you and Mr. Mahogany was over. I also knew that Bukenya by getting closer to Mengo had restocked the armory of his political rivals, notably Hon. Amama Mbabazi, to finish him off. I knew that now Mbabazi had found it easier to persuade you to join hands and finish off this sectarian, self-serving, chauvinist who is "really proud to be so deeply rooted in Buganda," as Bukenya describes himself in his book.

Indeed Bukenya did not help himself when, while campaigning to conquer Mbabazi's Secretary General job at Namboole last weekend, he proved his detractors right that he is "first-class" sectarian. In front of you, Mr President, the hitherto mahogany (until Sunday when Mbabazi relegated him to a pawpaw) said that the NRM Secretariat was full of people from one area (west), an utterance which made him sound more like an agent of MP Hussein Kyanjo than a VP. I should have been inside your head to tell the anguish you were going through as your great cadre went by his speech. And I am sure you were more relieved than Mbabazi on learning about the outcome of the race.

Lessons from Namboole

Well, Mr President these are some of the lessons you will go on learning about your "friends". Namboole spectacle should have been a rude awakening to you that: (1) Not everything that glitters is gold; (2) Your failure to address the succession question has left us seated on a time bomb which undoubtedly got invigorated at Namboole; and (3) It is illogical to embroil yourself in revitalising the political potency of individuals at the expense of the pedigree of NRM.

Mr President, I thought the events that have occurred in the last couple of years should have given you perfect lessons to the three aforementioned issues. But wapi? After glorifying Bukenya for nearly a decade to the extent of alienating your bush war comrades until he disappointed you, you have now picked from where you had left the "Mbabazi veneration struggle" against the feelings of your Luwero colleagues.

The anger depicted by Gen. Otafiire during his campaign to unseat Mbabazi was a signature position and feeling among his fellow bush war veterans. The way you have elevated Mbabazi over and above them, whom many have come out to say did not fight to deserve the special treatment, is the reason you nearly saw Otafiire's tears pouring.  

Without you, we are dead

Mr President, like I have written in these pages before, you have put our generation in a deep tragedy. We cannot imagine a Uganda without you. And although I can guess the width of your smile as you read this, it is not because we shall miss you per se. No. It is because you have failed to do what Walter Lippmann called, "The final test of a leader."

"The final test of a leader….the genius of a good leader, is to leave behind him a situation which common sense, without the grace of genius, can deal with successfully," he said 118 years ago.  
Yet after twenty-five uninterrupted years in power you have not arranged for us a situation which commonsense can deal with to save the future of the country you fought so hard to liberate.

Recently, a friend asked, "Won't these people kill us when Museveni goes?" He was referring to your NRM colleagues you came with from Luwero. Yet many of "these people" too feel the same way -- they cannot rule out the possibility that they would kill each other if you left.

Mr President, I used to oppose those who hold the opinion that you are a very selfish person, but now I doubt my psyche. The writing is on the wall that your exit time is naturally closing in. Even if you wanted to continue indefinitely some factors are crystal-clear that you will be leaving power in the near future. For example, you are steadily ageing that even if you were to maintain your popularity (which itself is highly questionable now) you will find yourself leaving Fidel Castro style. Yet you don't want to address the succession question.   

Show us a successor

This is very reason Ugandans have become so gullible to the extent of thinking that without you the nation would stop. This is not statesmanship. Statesmen, especially those compared with great leaders like Mandela, Nyerere, and Lee Kuan Yew prepared other men and gave the conviction and will to carry on. And they do this deliberately and openly to send the message across their countries. They let the country to confidently point at one or a couple of men who would take the mantle in the event of unlikely accident.

But look at us, we spend sleepless nights thinking what would befall our country in the event we woke up one day (God forbid!) and you are no more. On the contrary, you seem to enjoy watching your generals literally "killing" each other. This is the reason you usually elevate unpopular individuals who are unacceptable to them. That's why I feel that last weekend although Mbabazi won, NRM lost. blog comments powered by Disqus

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