This morning I watched President Museveni’s reaction to Mbabazi’s 2016 presidential bid and I think that the president rushed it. The president used 18 minutes to respond to Mbabazi’s 5 minutes declaration – now given that much time, I expected the president to deliver much more than the anger and scapegoating portrayed in his video. I expected to hear what the president would do differently if Ugandans gave him another chance to keep the top job, instead;
- The president seemed rather too angry and frustrated to address the country. If you watched the video you probably noticed that the president was even rude to his aids who were helping him to deliver this speech (see minutes 4:41 and 5:00).
- Museveni argues that Mbabazi should be held responsible for government’s failure to deliver its promises. Well, the president could be right but then again did it take the president 10 years to learn that Mbabazi was “not performing”?
If this is how the president is going to handle the presidential campaigns, looks like we are headed for a long rough ride – the same rhetoric that has failed governance and obstructed accountability. It looks like all the dirty linen is going public – the NRM will exonerate itself from all the failed government projects, name the officials who failed to deliver [just like the president did in his reaction to Mbabazi] and that will probably be a good thing. I mean, the famous “Temangalo” story is coming back to haunt Mbabazi and I am sure he has his own version of the story and I am quite eager to hear more about it but I am also interested in mature politics – blackmail does NOT count as mature.
The problem with this kind of politics or electioneering is it does not seek to improve service delivery or accountability, instead it is manipulative. It’s only aim is to create an enemy safe to hate to protect the party.
I hope that the presidential candidates will reduce on the amount of scapegoating, take responsibility where they have gone wrong – failed to deliver and most importantly convince Ugandans that they have the vision to “nurse the tired country”.
I hope that Mr. President will not be inclined to think that I am “misusing social media” when one of his “young people” show him this blog post!
The African Timer 