First came the outriders: two bare-chested boys riding pillion on a motorbike and waving tree branches in the air. Then the women whooped for joy and everyone surged forward as the dust-covered motorcade rumbled down the red dirt road. After two decades of one-party rule in Uganda, the arrival of the opposition leader Kizza Besigye was greeted like the first rain after a dry season. ”We want change,” shouted a group of young men. ”We are suffering — Besigye is our saviour!”
Uganda’s election on Thursday has become a referendum on the President, Yoweri Museveni, once regarded as a model African leader for his successes in tackling HIV/Aids and bringing stability to a war-torn country, but now increasingly viewed as a throwback to the dictatorial ”big men” of the continent’s past.
Besigye (49) is the only candidate with a chance of unseating the him. Besigye was the president’s personal physician and a close political ally before standing against him in the 2001 elections. Last October Besigye returned from four years in voluntary exile to run against Museveni for a second time.
On Sunday he hailed the crowd in the town of Kasawo from the open sun-roof of his four-wheel drive, saying: ”Museveni must go — whether he wants to or not, he has to go. His government only worked for the inner circle of relatives and friends, and he ignored the ordinary man.”
It is remarkable that Besigye is campaigning at all. He was arrested on charges of treason and rape last November, and held in custody. He was released on bail on January 2, and has since appeared in court 27 times over seven weeks, cutting his campaign schedule to ribbons.
In the final days before Thursday’s vote he has adopted blitzkrieg tactics; racing through villages, speaking from the roof of his car rather than a stage and honing his appeal to a few minutes of soundbites.
His whistle-stop tour is tapping a swelling discontent with the ruling party. At an earlier campaign stop in the village of Nakifuma, opposition supporter Musa Ahmed said: ”We don’t have any work. I’m a teacher but it takes 10 months to be paid — that’s not work.”
Uganda has known relative peace since Museveni seized power in 1986 and ended the chaotic violence of the dictators Idi Amin and Milton Obote. But many ordinary Ugandans have little to show for the years of stability. Although poverty has decreased, more than a third of the population lives on less than a dollar a day.
Despite economic growth, earnings from the country’s biggest export crop, coffee, are outstripped by remittances from Ugandans living in the West, now worth around $230-million annually. Britain is one of the biggest donors to a donor-dependent state. Just under half the government budget is reckoned to come from overseas aid.
For the opposition Forum for Democratic Change, the main battleground is not poverty, however, but restoring democracy to Uganda. Critics say the bringing of criminal charges against Besigye was a politically motivated attempt to use the courts to discredit a rival. The fear is that Uganda is sliding towards autocracy.
Western donors are among those growing impatient with Museveni, the 62-year-old former general who led a rebel army out of the bush to seize power in 1986. In response to Besigye’s arrest and jailing, Britain withdrew £15-million in aid it had given directly to the government and channelled it through the UN.
The opposition claims that the years of one-party rule have fused the ruling party, the National Resistance Movement, with the army, police and civil service. ”We believe in a country ruled by institutions, not by an individual,” said Sam Akaki, the opposition’s chief spokesperson.
Museveni has countered by blaming the opposition and western countries for Uganda’s woes, including a recent spate of power shortages. He has also attacked donor countries for trying to curb Uganda’s military spending. In an article published in the pro-government newspaper New Vision this week, he criticised ”the foreigners who make it their business to manage African countries as if they have no owners…who are always meddling in our internal affairs as if we have no brains to think for ourselves”.
It is not clear whether Museveni will respect a vote against him. At a rally last month, he hinted at reluctance to leave office, saying: ”You don’t just tell the freedom fighter to go like you are chasing a chicken thief out of the house.”
Backstory
On Thursday, Ugandans will vote for a new president and Parliament in the first multiparty elections since Yoweri Museveni seized power 20 years ago. Museveni’s main challenger is Kizza Besigye, who returned from exile last year to run for the Forum for Democratic Change. The campaign is said to have been marred by intimidation and military interference in the courts. Personal animus drives the rivalry: Besigye was Museveni’s physician, and his wife, Winnie Byanyima, was once Museveni’s girlfriend. The two fell out after Besigye accused the ruling party of corruption. – Guardian Unlimited Â