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25.10.2014 Feature Article

Why We Shouldn't Support The Muhoozi Presidency!

Why We Shouldn't Support The Muhoozi Presidency!
25.10.2014 LISTEN

Friends,
Here is part of Hitler's speech at Rheinmetall-Borsig Works, Berlin, on December 10, 1940: "In this Anglo-French world there exists, as it were, democracy, which means the rule of the people by the people. Now the people must possess some means of giving expression to their thoughts or their wishes. Examining this problem more closely, we see that the people themselves have originally no convictions of their own. Their convictions are formed,of course, just as everywhere else.

The decisive question is who enlightens the people,who educates them? In those countries, it is actually capital that rules; that is, nothing more than a clique of a few hundred men who possess untold wealth and, as a consequence of the peculiar structure of their national life, are more or less independent and free................It is my ambition to make the German people rich and to make the German homeland beautiful. I want the standard of living of the individual raised. I want us to have the most beautiful and the finest civilization. I should like the theater - in fact, the whole of German civilization - to benefit all the people and not to exist only for the upper ten thousand, as is the case in England.''

The speech was too long and I have picked the bits that may be relevant to what i wish to say on this point. Yes, pay your attention to the word:'ambition'. At the recent NRM NEC meeting, president Museveni is reported to have said:“We revolutionaries don't talk about ambition. You can have ambition but not at the expense of sacrifice; ambition - I want, I want, I want - is just reactionary thinking.”

I think the president is being dishonest about this. Everybody has got ambition.He had ambition when he launched a guerrilla war against Obote in 1980s. Hitler had ambition and he considered himself a 'revolutionary', didn't he? What Museveni is promoting is called utopianism, which banishes good, creative freedom--entrepreneurship, energy, dynamism, ambition, competitiveness, innovation, openness, honesty, etc. And I reckon our president will fail at some stage because it is not sustainable. He is trying to keep so many balls in air, as Hitler did, but there is a thing called 'making a blunder', and I guess his(Museveni) first blunder was arguably the removal of the presidential term limits from the constitution.

I remember listening to late Dr. Sula Kiggundu(RIP) on some Fm radio station saying that term limits was our 'insurance policy' against any president we don't like, against wars and stuff like that, but few of the NRM MPs took it seriously at the time. They only looked at today instead of tomorrow. What they forgot was that when someone starts a war purposely to remove president Museveni or attempts to assassinate him, basically because they want change, all of us undoubtedly get affected. The properties they(MPs) have accumulated get destroyed in the process; the kids they have had die instantly as part of collateral damage; the businesses they have started up all kiss each other good bye.............we all lose something here. But it takes someone who looks so far not to accept to be bought with a mere shs.5m just to change something as important as term limits were/are. People are so greedy nowadays and I wonder why!

The second blunder he is making, if it comes to pass and i believe it will, is trying to impose his son on Ugandans. That's not cool at all. Yes, Mr.Muhoozi is entitled to stand for presidency like any other Uganda citizen and I'm not trivializing his major responsibilities in the army(UPDF), but I just don't think that this is the time for a little developing country, like Uganda, to start a system(father to son) that will be difficult to evolve into something good for everybody in the long term.

The simplistic understanding of this should be a system that gives everybody a chance to stand and win the presidency fairly, which is not the case in Uganda at the moment, but we should aspire for something like that. A father- to- son presidency is way a bit over the top for us compared to the already developed nations with strong systems in place! Trust me, the US has more layers of control in this regard than a lot of other countries.

Let me broaden this a bit: Mrs.Jack-chan Mbabazi is quoted to have said that Museveni fears competition, right? Every human being on the planet is instinctively trying to promote themselves or their own.One way to win the competition is to either kill your competitors, keep them under lock, or surprise them. I believe Museveni, like any other human being, has been doing any of the three for nearly three decades. And it looks like we don't even have a system in place yet that will prevent his son, if he takes over, from not doing the same when he gets the presidency, and that should worry everyone promoting or not promoting the Muhozi presidency.

Basically,the system we should promote is where the goal isn't to be that the president and his family are the major beneficiaries. We call this simply political "civilization". Look at a cat and a dog.They have basically the same organs in approximately the same places.There are differences in shape, but the differences in shape of domestic dogs is far greater, and this could be explained by different environments of the two. We need to find a system that gives a lot of people chances to become what they want to be in life, regardless of the environment or who is in charge!

By the way, when is Mbabazi Amama pulling the 'I will show you' card? I guess he will have to think about this in his three months leave, won't he? My only concern is, whatever he is planning, we need to protect the few trees still standing. His misunderstandings with Museveni should not comprise the safety of other Ugandans! I still think Mbabazi is a loyal stiff who'll, at least publicly, back Museveni up all the way to the end because he has little choice.I can't see him opening his mouth attacking the president openly while still in Uganda.No,that would cut his own throat! Well, as they say: 'What goes around, comes around' (no pun intended).

Byebyo ebyange banange!
--
Abbey Kibirige Semuwemba
Stalk my blog at: http://semuwemba.com/
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'“Never be afraid to raise your voice for honesty and truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If people all over the world would do this, it would change the earth.” ― William Faulkner

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