www.africa-confidential.com 6 April 2001 Vol 42 No 7 AFRICA CONFIDENTIAL SOUTH AFRICA 2 UGANDA Rules of law Lawyers fear the government’s Ungracious winner draft legal practice bill could bring President Museveni’s crushing victory raises concerns about the their profession under state control return of personal rule through a council which would report to the Minister of Justice. ‘Losing is completely hypothetical. It will not happen,’ President Yoweri Museveni told journalists in Kampala on the eve of the presidential election on 13 March. He did not lose and his opponent, Kizza Besigye, is asking the Supreme Court to annul the result because of rigging and intimidation by KENYA 3 Museveni’s campaign team. Besigye’s court action started on 2 April and may last a month. The Court is likely to hear much about the Museveni team’s rough tactics and may see video and audio evidence of Leave it to Sally abuses. Few believe that Besigye will win but reporting of the proceedings will further damage New civil service chief Sally Kosgey Museveni’s reputation as a progressive reformer. He abandoned his revolutionary Marxist views shortly wasted no time in sacking the after winning power in 1986. senior officials installed by her predecessor, Richard Leakey. The Most Ugandans had never before witnessed real elections. Museveni’s first serious challenger - a civil service is safely back in the retired colonel, formerly his personal physician and government minister - is, like the President, Ankole hands of the Kalenjin elite under from the east of the country. He stood as a reformer of the ruling National Resistance Movement, gaining Moi and Nicholas Biwott. strength from an alliance with Museveni’s opponent in the 1996 election, Paul Ssemogerere of the Democratic Party, whose main support is from Catholics in Buganda, in the south-west. In return for MALAWI 4 Ssemogerere’s support and that of the populist ex-mayor of Kampala, Nasser Ssegebaga, Besigye promised to hasten the return to multi-party politics. Brown bounces back In a hot contest, the opinion polls suggested that Museveni would get not much over the 50 per cent of the vote needed to avoid a run-off. Few believed that he would get more than 60 per cent, except his Brown Mpinganjira is more popular than ever after an unsuccessful campaign team, which insisted he would get 70 per cent. In the event, Museveni took 69.3 per cent, while prosecution for corruption. Leading Besigye trailed with just 27.8 per cent, far below what even his critics had predicted. the NDA coalition, he is now tipped as the strongest candidate against Election aftermath the ruling UDF. How genuine was the result? Obviously, as Museveni’s supporters claim, the opinion polls oversampled people in trading centres and urban areas, where he has most opponents. In a referendum last June, USA/SUDAN 5 electors were asked to choose between the Movement and multi-party politics; towns in traditional pro- Museveni areas voted strongly against the Movement. Museveni rightly claims that his strength is among Caution, lobbies at the peasantry, 90 per cent of Uganda’s people. work Besigye insists that the President won by widespread rigging, harassment and intimidation. In court he needs to prove not just that there were irregularities, which electoral observers admit, but that these Sudan policy touches two of the Bush administration’s core would have significantly affected the outcome. His loyal supporters admit that in a fair election, he would supporters: big oil and the religious probably have lost but with a bigger share of the vote. right. Church groups and African- The election showed a disturbing side of the Museveni regime, a favourite of successive British and American activists are leading the United States’ governments. Museveni reacted to Besigye’s challenge in a personal way, defensively, charge against Khartoum. looking intolerant and contemptuous of criticism. His intellectual confidence and willingness to argue with critics was one of Museveni’s strongest assets. It is a wasting asset. He turned to insiders and CONGO-BRAZZA 7 hardliners, particularly within the security forces, to ensure his victory. As Commander in Chief, he relied heavily on the army in the run-up to the poll. His special task force Settling Sassou to deal with election-related violence was led by the Army Commander, Major General Jeje Odongo, Four years after seizing power, working with Military Intelligence, the police and the internal security organisations. Museveni said the military leader Sassou Nguesso is police was not up to the job; his opponents argued that the soldiers were intimidating. In defiance of the is trying to cut a deal with some Electoral Commission, Museveni deployed his Presidential Protection Unit in western Rukungire, long pliable politicians who will agree to a Museveni stronghold, divided this time by the candidature of Besigye, a local man. a gradual transition to In one notorious incident, the PPU fired on a crowd of Besigye supporters, leaving one person dead. constitutional rule. Museveni kept them in the area on the grounds that his supporters were being intimidated, even though media reports suggested that the intimidation was of, not by, Besigye people. POINTERS 8 The army’s antics, some of which shocked Museveni’s own supporters, included the arrest in February of the youth advisor to Besigye’s Task Force, Maj. Okwiri Rabwoni, a member of parliament and brother Africa/Arms, Congo- of the Director of Military Intelligence, Lieutenant Col. Noble Mayombo. The arrest followed a violent K and UK/France confrontation at Entebbe International Airport. The circumstances remain unclear but Rabwoni was 6 April 2001 Africa Confidential Vol 42 No 7 finally released without charge and travelled to Britain, where he 2. An opposition coalition that is serious and determined but includes spoke against the government. disagreeable fringe elements that have no commitment to democracy and On election day there were many reports of rigging, ballot-box could turn violent. stuffing and other irregularities. The extent is still not known but the 3. Army and security forces split: a possible mutiny, inside Uganda or among returnees from Congo-Kinshasa, cannot be ruled out. offences seem to have been sanctioned at local level rather than from 4. A leadership on both sides with a history of using violence for political the centre. The worst areas were Rukingire, where foreign journalists ends: Museveni, the former guerrilla, has vowed to ‘crush’ his opponents or went to see the rigging, and the eastern district of Mbale. ‘blow them up’. His post-election crackdown could be grim. The opposition Museveni failed to treat Besigye as a credible political opponent and has soldiers, too. Besigye is a colonel, Maj. Rabwoni fought in Museveni’s demonised him. The opposition platform, accusing Museveni’s National Resistance Army, in the Rwandan People’s Army (as an aide to Movement of growing undemocratic, corrupt and riven by cronyism, Kagame) all the way to Kinshasa, and inside Sudan. had wide support even within the Movement itself: insiders said 5. Corruption has gone deep; many in the ruling circles are accustomed to privately they hoped Besigye’s challenge would shock the President using irregular means for personal wealth. into addressing these issues once and for all. However, the international community has no alternative to Museveni Museveni refused - at least in public - to recognise that Besigye had and Uganda has not yet shifted beyond the pale. Apart from the a point and repeatedly called him and his wife, Museveni’s former electoral lapses, it has a better human rights record than most of its lover, Winnie Byanyima, ‘traitors’. This abuse continued throughout neighbours, with an economy praised by the World Bank and healthy the campaign, doing little to suggest that Museveni tolerates political media, forthright in criticising the electoral process. When he was opposition, as he must if, as he has promised donors, he returns the campaigning, Museveni said he wanted five more years to build on his country to pluralist politics within five years. successes in such areas as infrastructure, the economy, education and Museveni’s stance did not soften in victory. He claimed there had health. been rigging by Besigye’s side and that he had secured 75 per cent of Just conceivably, Museveni’s bark will prove worse than his bite, he the vote. He labelled his opponent as part of the old order of Idi Amin will address the issues raised by Besigye and he will prepare not just Dada and Milton Obote, although Besigye joined Museveni’s guerrilla a political successor but a political process for holding the 2006 struggle in 1981 and was at one time the Movement’s chief ideologue. election under multi-party rules. In the worst case, he will refuse a Even more worryingly, Museveni announced that he would begin political opening and maintain his Movement after 2006, continuing filling political posts on the basis of regional support and would never to narrow its base and giving his more militant opponents little option allow Besigye in his government. This could have been a way of but to struggle. He could even use a pro-Movement parliament to encouraging voters to choose pro-Movement candidates in the coming amend the constitution, allowing him to stand for a further term. That parliamentary elections and came as a surprise from a man who has could be too much for the pliable donor governments to swallow, always wanted to restrict party activity on the grounds that the though; loans and grants make up more than half the budget. Movement is broad-based and all-inclusive. The statement suggests a further narrowing of the Movement’s SOUTH AFRICA political base.