It is not easy for leaders to relinquish power. Like almost anything else, power can be addictive. And the more leaders become preoccupied with holding on to power, the less their leadership is about the prosperity of their countries and wellbeing of their people and the more it becomes about devising measures to keep them in power.
Yoweri Museveni was instrumental in Uganda’s struggle against the dictatorship of Idi Amin. Following Amin’s deposition in 1979, Museveni lost elections to Milton Obote, elections that he and others believed to have been rigged.
To correct this injustice, Museveni led the National Resistance Movement that waged a guerrilla war against Obote’s regime. Having overpowered the government, Museveni declared himself president on January 26 1986.
Museveni remains the president of Uganda. This was not by chance but by design. What happens before an election is as important as the election and the election outcome themselves.
The run up to the January 14 presidential poll in that country did not inspire any confidence that the elections would meet the standard of freeness and fairness.
When opposition leaders and supporters are harassed, prevented from campaigning and even face arrest, these are not signs of a state that seeks to safeguard the acceptable standards of a truly competitive election. But it is not the rigging of the most recent elections that paved the way for a sixth term for Museveni.
In 2005, parliament passed a constitutional amendment to scrap presidential term limits. That was the beginning of Museveni’s path to a lifetime presidency. However, given his advanced age, removing the term limit was not sufficient.
The Ugandan constitution capped the age of eligibility for a candidate to run for president at 75. And so in 2017 another constitutional amendment cleared the way for the now 76-year-old Museveni to have another shot at the presidency when this age limit was scrapped.
By the time Bobi Wine was coming onto the scene to galvanise a new generation of voters to imagine a new Uganda and to buy into a new vision, the custodians of the old vision had already guaranteed its survival.
Although elections are a good indicator of the health of a democracy, elections don’t a democracy make. Elections are more a platform to showcase the progress a society has and is making on entrenching democracy as a norm and value, as a practice and behaviour and as a set of resilient and independent institutions.
It should have been clear to democracy-loving Ugandans that tampering with the constitution to give a leader already three decades at the helm of the country more time there was not about entrenching democracy but entrenching personal rule.
Museveni, by persuading an institution that should be a check on his power to expand the extent of that power, was proving that he sees himself as bigger than the institutions that are meant to give democracy longevity long after leaders have come and gone.
The use of state machinery, particularly the police and military, to suppress opposition only testifies that old habits die hard. It was the use of guns that initially brought Museveni to power.
Frankly, he tested democracy when he competed against Obote and the lesson he got there was that electioneering doesn’t get you anywhere. Grabbing power by the barrel of the gun worked for him then, why not use the same method to retain it?
At 57% of 18m registered voters, the voter turnout is hardly an indication of citizens that view the political system as legitimate. Museveni’s 58% and Bobi Wine’s 34% are only a reflection of what just over half of the eligible voting age population think about their fitness to govern.
This by far is the clearest statement about the health of Uganda’s democracy. The biggest threat to democratisation is when more and more people just stop caring before, during and after elections.
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