President Museveni came to power in 1986 and after 31 years, he feels deeply entrenched in power that he is now fused with the state. Uganda is Museveni and Museveni is Uganda.
The plot to remove age limit to pave way for a life Presidency has illuminated greed and a sense of invincibility that makes Mr. Museveni predictable and boring.
The whole country is already in dire distress and strains from his prolonged rule. Even his own people from Western Uganda, now view him as a liability.
Uganda has reached a point of maturity and needs to experience a transition. The earlier the transition – when Mr. Museveni is still alive and sensible – the better. Any transition occasioned by his sudden or untimely demise could spell utter doom for this country and threatens the ill-begotten loot of his associates.
The state of Uganda is not what it is presented under Mr. Museveni as all rosy and progressive. Nearly every public institution has collapsed under the weight of corruption, negligence of duty and sectarianism.
The youth unemployment rate alone demonstrates the inelasticity of the Museveni-era liberal market. The effect of sectarianism, discrimination and insecurity show a country so unequal in all dimensions of life.
Mr. Museveni might forcefully hang-on to power. But deep inside, he knows that he owns the state, but not the people of Uganda. Many Ugandans, even those who once deified him, have become exhausted of his misrule. To demonstrate his wane in influence, his Party now depends heavily on bribes to sway its own Parliament to enact egregious land grabbing laws and curtail personal freedoms. Public institutions are his personal reserves for keeping his loyalists on taxpayers money.
The charismatic Museveni of yesteryears is long gone. We have the shell of a man who, the moment he starts to address his own state officials, his voice and recycled truths inundates everyone to near comatose.
Times have changed, and Mr. Museveni or his minders ought to be reminded that Uganda can not benefit from the expired revolutionary “ideology” of obscurantism. Uganda yearns for young and well educated leaders. People capable of steering this sluggish economy into a formidable engine of development, diversifying the economy into manufacturing and use of modern technologies to create jobs for youths.
Thirty years in power and Uganda still exports unprocessed plant-based products in a world markets where competitiveness lies in communications technology, transportation and other robust forms of manufacturing and services.
The economy as is, can only vibrate within a narrow base because of contradictions inherent in the corrupt nature of the regime.
Uganda will continue to pile on its foreign debts, thereby mortgaging our future generations even before they are born. Already the Ministry of Finance has raised an alarm, that the current borrowing will not be sustainable; that every Ugandan is bonded to one million Shs at birth, and the trade deficit ratio between export and import is 2:1
Youths of this country need to be told that the regime already borrowed and stole the money meant to create opportunities for them. The education system under spends, making children non-competitive in the global labor markets, while Mr. Museveni runs Uganda as his private business – everything must rest around him and his cahoots.
However, we all know how Mr. Museveni re-invents himself and we allow him. His mastery of the use of military and the state instruments of coercion are his means of reinventing. The recent UN conference on refugees gave him a lease of life to pulverize our democratic principles as he wishes.
There comes a time when every Ugandan, in their seemingly sheepish and non-outrageous pose, will surprise the tyrant with a sudden and unexpected contraction. The young people should take the matter of democratization of Uganda seriously into their hands. Mr. Museveni’s life presidency must be defeated by irate young people seeking for a better future.
