As the contest for the position of Speaker of Parliament heats up, the public is being treated to yet another spectacle of how politics is played out in Uganda.
It can get nauseating watching all the pettiness of it. Some quarters argue that northern Uganda has been “neglected” and so Deputy Speaker Jacob Oulanyah should be elected.
Others insist that eastern Uganda has also been neglected and besides the current Speaker, Ms Rebecca Kadaga, should be given another five years. Besides, others argue, women remain at the margins of Ugandan society and so all the more reason to make up for this imbalance by retaining Kadaga.
For those who wonder what certain regions being neglected has got to do with being the Speaker of the national assembly, welcome to the politics of unproductive, feudal societies.
Genesis
When it took power in 1986, the National Resistance Movement (NRM) had just won a military victory but did not yet have a political base.
Aware of its lack of popular political appeal, right from the start the NRM decided to create what it termed a “broad-based” government. This would achieve two purposes.
First, it would help calm the country down and reduce as early as possible the resistance to the NRM that was being mounted in several quarters, particularly in Acholi and Teso.
Secondly, this co-opting of the various established political forces would help the NRM gain its own national political ground by using the old parties as its proxy.
Thus in a contradiction that would become standard right from the start, the NRM would condemn the Democratic Party (DP) and Uganda Peoples Congress (UPC) and Conservative Party (CP) of having fanned the flames of sectarianism in Uganda through religion and tribe, but at the same time it would work with senior leaders from these parties to help it gain its own internal following.
The NRM was steeped in Marxism ideology but in late 1985 it would arrange to have the Crown Prince of Buganda, Ronald Mutebi, tour the occupied NRA parts of western Uganda as a ploy to win over the last remaining and sceptical Baganda.
It has now become a political way of life that is reflected in the Opposition too.
From its founding in 2005, the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) instituted this redundant calculation by the NRM. The FDC has a deputy president for the eastern, western, northern and Buganda regions.
Given this history, there should be little surprise at the relative stability of Uganda. It was achieved by absorbing figurehead leaders of Opposition groups and other influential sections of public opinion.
The trade-off was to lead to the largest and most redundant state bureaucracy in Ugandan history and one of the largest in the world.
Uganda now has about as many Members of Parliament as there are United States Members of the House of Representatives. It has one of the largest cabinets in the world and for a country of its size, one of the largest number of districts in the world.
As the host Andrew Mwenda said on the 93.3 KFM “Hot Seat” talk show on Friday April 22, he has not seen a person who is so political in his mindset as President Museveni.
Every policy move he makes, every decision he contemplates, every action he takes, said Mwenda, is calculated with a political objective in mind.
To Museveni, the final question in everything is politics: will it win him votes? Will it lose him votes? Will it make him look good politically? Will it consolidate his grip on power?
If the people want dirty water to drink and by giving them dirty water to drink it will buy him one more year in power, then Museveni will give them dirty water to drink.
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