Why Mbabazi must declare himself a one-term President

Before I seek your further indulgence, permit me make a couple of disclaiming, if not qualifying, statements.

First, is that I am not a Mbabazi camp-insider, and therefore not privy to the plans and rationale motivating and offering direction to the course of the Ugandan ex-Premier’s campaign tide.

Even offered such opportunity, given the relative obscurity of Mr. Mbabazi’s policy and structural alternatives at the moment, I can’t quite be too sure I’d oblige.

Second, is that I wish I could address the issues in this article to any and all the hopefuls whetting their appetites to contend in next year’s Ugandan presidential race. But while I believe President-General Mao, Dr. Besigye, Maj. Gen. Muntu, Dr. Bwanika and their comrades in the struggle deserve the opportunity to lead the country out of its political quandary and steer a successful transition, I am sad to say the political reality disfavors their aspirations.

Westminster politics is sadly, as practiced in Uganda, more rooted in an often unfair, irrational and unjust realism; than in a fair and Utopian idealism - because it relies upon the decisions of a majority, however ignorant, illiterate, gullible and out-rightly brainless this majority may be, to determine who leads society. 

This is why Amama Mbabazi – the candidate with perhaps the most tainted, suspect and condemnable political track-record, is also ironically the best-placed, most-able and most-likely contender in Uganda’s ‘opposition’ today, to grapple with and trounce Museveni in an electoral contest.

It can be, and truthfully, said that Mbabazi is corrupt, arrogant, indifferent and perhaps even selfishly opportunistic in his ways.

What could better explain his decision to defect so late from a National Resistance Movement that he has helped significantly entrench, and attempt to ride on the high tide of a political discontent engineered by longer-serving dissidents like Besigye and Lukwago?

Indeed – persons like Betty Kamya, Miria Matembe, Okwiri Rabwoni etc. are better tried and better proven, and would certainly make more compassionate, sincere and transformational leaders than Mbabazi will ever be.

But Ugandans cannot escape the truth that compassion, sincerity or transformation alone cannot uproot President Yoweri’s vice-like strangle-hold on Uganda’s throat. 

Not even aggression or fearlessness can stem the ability of the incumbent to annul the rule of law and crack-down violently on opposition to his hegemony, or buy-off the masses of rural peasantry with millions of tax-payers’ money.

Indeed, we must come to the conclusion that Museveni can only be successfully tackled by someone who thinks and acts like Museveni. Ugandans need to send a thief to catch a thief.

This is where Amama comes in handy; he knows Yoweri better than any of the other contenders. He has been closer to and more intimate with Museveni –  it is said, even greatly respected by him. He has access to large stashes of personal and external cash which can ‘convert’ the majority poor to our cause as well. He has a well developed network of informers and local on-the-ground ‘contacts’ across the country - a legacy from his Minister of Security days.

 And better still – Mbabazi is said to be thoroughly cold and calculative; unlike Besigye, whose emotionality always makes him an easy target for Museveni’s steel stoicism, Mbabazi understands how ascetically ruthless Museveni is, and is willing to apply the same approach to politics.

Like Museveni, Amama is also largely without virtue – which is why he is the iron that will sharpen Museveni, a self-proclaimed ‘iron-man’ himself!

To deploy a biblical analogy, I submit that what Uganda needs is not an arch-angel Michael that will smite Lucifer; we need a stronger clone of Lucifer to trounce his own master.

Indeed – it may be said that all we have at our disposal are only several versions of ‘Lucifers’, since not a single Presidential hopeful is without blemish. 
Madam Kamya has been linked to corruption in the past, Mao is rumored to be a double-agent, Besigye is said to be after settling personal scores etc …

Why therefore, out of these ‘lucifers’, do we not choose the strongest available; in this case, Mr. Mbabazi?

Uganda, in the next five years, needs just a transitional president, not necessarily a transformational one!

However, unvirtuous, untrustworthy and unpopular Mbabazi might be – he is Uganda’s best hope at transition, which is why we need to back him! Not out of love or charm – but out of a desperate necessity. Even, Gerald Karuhanga - MP, perhaps Mbabazi’s most virulent graft-accuser, has implied as much.

To crown it all – Mbabazi should adopt the one game-changer that will in a single-stroke give him all his former boss’s strengths and formidability, and yet simultaneously, virtually erase all Mr. Museveni’s weaknesses from him.

Mbabazi should declare himself a one-term President!

He should declare himself as a ‘means’ to Uganda’s end - not an end in himself.

This will, in my view, automatically endear himself to a generation of voters that are so angry and frustrated at Museveni’s portrayal of himself as a political demi-god and panacea to all Uganda’s political ills!

Mbabazi should categorically state that his role is to simply remove Museveni as an obstacle to change, and between 2016 and 2021, pave the way for transition by returning presidential term-limits to our constitution; and strengthening our institutions to ensure that this is eternally respected.

You see, afterall, even the devil, vile and villainous though he may be, had a pivotal role to play in mankind’s ultimate redemption.

How else would mankind have known God’s importance had the devil never put it to question through rebellion?

Surumani Manzi.