How events will unfold in next 5 years

A road under construction. The major infrastructure projects currently being undertaken by the Chinese will continue apace. FILE PHOTO 

Yoweri Museveni, the NRM presidential candidate, named the winner of the 2016 general election by the Electoral Commission on February 20.
In reporting this, many influential Western news media were careful in their choice of words, stating it as “was named…” or “was declared…”, rather than “won…”.

The choice of words reflected the Western and national misgivings about the climate in which the elections were conducted.

Nevertheless, Museveni in just over a month’s time gets to start a five-year term that ends in 2021. If he completes it, he will have become not only the longest-serving head of state in East Africa, but the wider Great Lakes region.

Only Haile Selassie, emperor of Ethiopia (44 years, 1930-1974) will have ruled longer and it is difficult to see the circumstances under which Museveni will choose to step down in 2021.

As the Ugandan public resumed their daily routine on Monday February 22 after coming to terms with the reality of another five years of Museveni, some in the media and political communities started looking ahead to the next five years.

The government
As Onapito Ekomoloit, panellist on the 93.3 KFM Friday “Hot Seat” talk show, said on February 19, this is a presidential system, not a parliamentary one that Uganda has.

In Museveni’s hands alone is wielded about 80 per cent of all political power in Uganda, with the remaining 20 per cent shared between a handful of Museveni’s aides.

The reason this category has any political power is because of its ability to act the go-between, connecting political ‘clients’, prospective foreign investors and others to Museveni.

The rest of the Ugandan State – Judiciary, Parliament, army, police – wield only secondary power.

Uganda today has slipped back into a pre-colonial, semi-feudal political and social order, albeit while retaining the façade of a modern nation-state.

For this reason, there will not be any NRM government to speak of from 2016 to 2021 but rather an NRM party and an NRM-led government acting as support organisation that carry out Museveni’s orders.

The major infrastructure projects currently being undertaken by the Chinese will continue apace, working independently of government supervision as the Chinese with their sense of work ethic will complete them regardless of central government incompetence.

A number of semi-autonomous bodies – Bank of Uganda, the Uganda Revenue Authority, the National Social Security Fund, the Capital Markets Authority, the Uganda Tourism Board, the Uganda Investment Authority and the Vision Group, among others – will continue performing at an above-average rate in spite of the general inertia and drag in the mainstream government bureaucracy and civil service.

They will retain their ability to perform satisfactorily by East African standards provided their policies and projects do not pose a threat to State House (and given their generally benign or bland image, will manage to avoid conflict with State House.)

Outside Kampala and Entebbe, the government’s presence will remain as thin as always: derelict police stations and posts, RDCs’ offices equipped with 1990s computers, worn-out furniture, tattered Uganda flags, with the local army barracks, prisons and prison farms, district Internal Security Organisation offices and highway traffic police officers as the only symbols of the State.