Do you think President Museveni is worried about Bobi Wine?
By Joaninne Nanyange
I don’t think Museveni is worried about Bobi Wine. The man might be an annoyance to him and might cause discomfort, but I don’t think he is worried about him in the sense that he can oust his political power or anything close.
Museveni is a political genius and is lucky to rule in a country where the political context is corrupt enough to put all state machinery (literally and figuratively) at his disposal.
Like you saw with the Togikwatako campaign (and all presidential elections, needless to say) Museveni wins if he really wants to, regardless of popular opinion, which is what Bobi Wine claims.
People have had Bobi Wine’s fervent political numbers before and popular good will and it all came to naught.
Most interesting among these is Nasser Ntege Ssebaggala. So Museveni and Uganda have seen this before. I agree with Besigye that numbers will not take power from Museveni, if such numbers are to be used for polls.
I assume his implication is that numbers can only bring about change if they go somewhere else (bush maybe?) instead of the polls.
These Parliamentary by-election wins are not even anywhere near denting Museveni’s tight grip on Parliament or the numbers he has there.
While they may be symbolically consequential, they are not that useful when it comes to actual shaking or turning over tables. Like I said, if Museveni really wants to win, he will win.
He is the beginning and the end of Uganda’s democracy. Look at the OTT saga. The Mobile Money tax is only getting revised (I hope it is) because HE said so. Because HE agrees that it should be revised.
Even in courts of law, he only loses cases he can afford to lose. Now if Besigye and Muntu are not his ‘spies’ as is sometimes alleged, those are the people that can scare him.
He knows they can do what he did to come to power, or they can at least try. Those he can be scared of. Bobi Wine on the other hand?
Well…he will give us plenty adrenaline rushes and excitement, grab a few wins here and there to create a smoke screen of effective democracy in Uganda, but that will be it.
When the real battles show up e.g. Togikwatako, the winner will win. This is not to say that Ugandans should sit back and let him lead till he drops. This is to say that we shouldn’t be excited by things that will not amount to much and lose sight of what needs to be done. The people of Zimbabwe did it.
In a pseudo democracy like Uganda, where democracy is like a wig that you put on once in a while for your convenience, People Power is not applicable here. #bobiwine