Uganda: Opposition Ups Mobilization Skills

Ugandan Opposition should encouraged the people to organise themselves into an Army of Free Citizens. The People, and not individual political leaders, will resist Museveni vote rigging.

The Ugandan political opposition has, without any shadow of a doubt, managed to eclipse Museveni’s NRM party in on-going national election campaigns, with ordinary Ugandans rallying behind the two main opposition leaders, Dr. Kizza Besigye and Mr. Amama Mbabazi in incredibly huge numbers, even the remotest of villages.

This ecstatic display of support for the opposition has rendered Dictator Museveni extremely worried about the increasingly successful mobilization skills by the two main opposition presidential candidates, so much so that he, (Museveni), is now openly and evidently putting in place elaborate plans to sabotage the outcome of the coming vote, scheduled to take place early in 2016.

Millions of state-sponsored militias, backed up with tens of thousands of Special Forces Command troops, commanded by Museveni’s son Brigadier Museveni, are being assembled and mobilized with the sole intent of helping to ensure that Museveni wins the elections, even when he will have been denied the support of the majority of Ugandan voters.

As Free Uganda and its Chairman General David Sejusa have severally fore-warned, Museveni’s plans to rig the elections, as he has done in all past elections, can only be defeated by an equally mobilized and effectively empowered citizenry, who must be prepared to proactively counter Museveni’s rigging machinery, to the extent of rising up in a powerful People Power Revolt as necessary.

Free Uganda (FU) is actively working with the emboldened political opposition and all other pro-democracy forces to actualize the said All-citizens Resistance against Museveni’s rigging machine, but FU continues to call upon all the opposition leaders to play their part in mobilizing and the bring awareness to the masses in the cities, towns, and villages across Uganda, so that the Dictator is denied even the smallest drop of rigging opportunity, as has happened in past elections.

The most effective way the Ugandan Political Opposition can overpower Museveni’s rigging machinery is through encouraging the people to organise themselves into an Army of Free Citizens, based on what General Sejusa, the FU Chairman, has called ‘Rear Guard Action Groups (RGAGs).

Rear Guard Action Groups are resistance cells in all parts of the country with the capacity to organise other citizens into ‘Vote Guarders’, but, in the eventuality of action requirement, to organise groups in readiness to take orders.

In this vital anti-rigging resistance dynamic, it is of critical importance for all to understand that it is the People (when well organized and empowered in their millions), and not individual political leaders, who can best resist Museveni vote rigging.

The role of the political leaders is to educate, mobilize and empower the masses in the necessary resistance skills, and it is the masses to take the actual action of resisting the regime’s vote stealing machinations.

One reason why Museveni has succeeded in rigging and stealing the vote in past elections is because senior opposition leaders wrongly thought that they, the leaders, were to be the center of action, and the fulcrum of all activities relating to the resistance struggle, while not adequately mobilizing and empowering the masses to take action by themselves.

As a result, when the moment of action arrived, the leaders found themselves on the frontline with just a few citizens prepared to participate in the anti-regime actions. The leaders were easily neutralized and, with no mass action in site, the Dictator was able to declare himself winner, even when he had lost the vote.

So the cardinal principle must be that – “…The People, and not individual political leaders, are the real foot-soldiers in the resistance against vote-rigging.”

Any leader who ignores this principle cannot and will not effectively lead his troops (supporters) to the Promised Land. In other words, even well-intended statements from opposition leaders, such as “I will personally handle the vote rigging at the Electoral Commission Headquarters” can serve to hamper the People’s Struggle for Change rather than enhance it.

The People can mistake this to be a signal not to act when systemic rigging and fraud is taking place on the computer systems at the Electoral Commission, or indeed in other places, for example in specially designated vote-manipulation bureaus run by Museveni’s security apparatus, as was the case in 2011 and even before.

Ugandans must not forget the damning exposure by the Free Uganda Chairman, General David Sejusa, when he gave details of how the result of the 2011 presidential elections were doctored by special units of state intelligence at a secret location before being given to the Kigundu Electoral Commission to declare.

So how does one opposition leader, or even all political leaders put together stop that type of fraud? What if Museveni moves quickly to take out the leaders, by for example arresting them, how will they, the leaders, prevent him from completing his long-prepared job of stealing the vote?

Free Uganda and its leader, General David Sejusa, have forewarned Ugandans, and even gone on to privately and publically counsel all the opposition political leaders not to take things for granted, and not to be fooled and over-excited by the huge eye-blinding crowds showing up at opposition rallies, thereby forgetting or abandoning the cardinal principle guiding this current People’s Struggle for a Museveni-free Uganda – i.e the centrality of the People… the Masses… in a People’s liberation struggle.

People-centred Struggle:
It is only a properly mobilized and ideologically empowered citizenry, right from the cities to the remotest villages of Uganda, who can have the capacity to prevent Museveni from rigging the elections, or declaring himself winner when he has lost to the opposition.

It is only a fully-prepared, fully empowered ‘Army of Free Citizens’, led by special Rear Guard Action Groups (RGAGs) and other specialized liberation force units, who can mount successful mass resistance operations, and ultimately a nationwide People Power Revolt against a determined election-rigging dictator, like Museveni.

It is imperative, therefore, for the opposition leaders to preach the gospel of liberation to the masses, who are now attending opposition rallies in their millions. The People need to be fully educated about the various ways in which elections are rigged.

They need to be mobilized (this you can do secretly) into action-oriented and fully functional liberation forces of various types, sizes, and capacities, depending on the possible tasks ahead.

Ultimately, the People need to be empowered with the necessary skills and tools to do the job.

That is the only way, Museveni is going to be prevented from rigging the 2016 elections, and the only way he is going to be forced out of state house if he manages to rig the vote, as he is already doing.