In Summary
President Museveni is running for a fourth elective term, in an election that unlike the previous two races, has registered no major incidents. If he wins the February polls, Mr Museveni will, after the next five-year term, have been President of Uganda for 30 years. In an interview at his country home in Rwakitura on January 1, Alex B. Atuhaire talked to him about this year's race and its historical significance to the country.
QN: You are in the middle of the campaigns, how different has this race been from that of 2001 and 2006?QN: You are in the middle of the campaigns, how different has this race been from that of 2001 and 2006?
The NRM has been on a long journey starting in 1965 when we started the nucleus of the NRM by getting some of the youth from the Democratic Party, like myself and others from the Uganda People’s Congress like [Eriya] Kategaya, [Ruhakana] Rugunda and [Amama] Mbabazi and forming a third force against the sectarian platform of the three old parties--DP, which was supposed to be for Catholics, UPC for Protestants and Kabaka Yyeka for Baganda Protestants.
We rejected the bankrupt position of those parties. We said this is rubbish; how can we have people behaving politically on the basis of where they were baptized or born? What if somebody of my religion is wrong, how can I deal with him?
In 1971 we came out openly to form Fronasa to fight Idi Amin after we had failed to agree with UPC on how to fight Amin. We negotiated with them from January 1971 but we couldn’t agree so in August 1971, we formed what became NRM. At that time we were calling it Fronasa, which fought alongside the Tanzanian-backed allied forces to depose Amin in 1979.
However, that alliance betrayed the cause by trying to usurp power and we told them to stop it or we deal with them. They took us for jokers and we were forced to do what we had warned them we would do. So we started the resistance against [Dr Milton] Obote and we defeated them in 1986, and the others – the Tito Okello group.
After that, we had to fight the remnants of the old regime supported by Sudan. Sudan was supporting them because they had the colonial programmes where the Arabs were trying to colonise the black people.
The Arabs feared the leadership of NRM because they knew our history, they knew that we are patriots, we are nationalists, we are Pan-Africanists; we fight for the dignity of the black people. So they thought that if we consolidated power in Uganda, one day we might support the SPLA--the black people of southern Sudan. So they thought that the solution was to remove us from government here and that is how they linked up with our groups from the old regimes and started fighting us.
In short, I'm simply saying this is the first time in 45 years of the NRM that we have developed so much military capacity leading to the defeat of all armed opposition within and outside Uganda. This has got political implications. For the first time the people of Uganda are no longer in the shadow of armed terrorists groups, including the cattle rustlers of Karamoja. Because the NRM has, from a military point of view, defeated all armed opposition, including disarming cattle rustlers. Politically, it means Ugandans can now look at all our programmes.
Because in the past the people of the north could not look at our programmes as they were under the shadow of these terrorists, including the fact that they could not vote freely because terrorists would tell them if you vote for NRM we shall kill you. And many people were killed. I remember our chairman in Pabo, Bongomin was killed. And if you remember some two MPs are in court for colluding with the terrorists.
QN: But the courts ruled that the MPs were being framed...
You have seen the support is massive for the NRM all over the country. I started my campaigns in Luwero as I always do, massive support; Nakasongola then I went to the north, Lango, Acholi, West Nile, Karamoja, Teso, Bugisu, Bukedi, Busoga; now I am here in the west, the NRM support is massive and rightly so because there is no other party that has stood with Ugandans for all these years on all issues. That’s why when I read your papers I just laugh; it’s like a comic book for children - you people are writing rubbish.
QN: From 75 per cent in 1996, to 69 in 2001 and 59 in 2006; it shows that voters are not happy with the performance of your government.
First of all, those percentages were not true because there was always massive cheating by the opposition in some of the areas, especially in the north. That has been proven, because the people who were in the opposition have come and told us–which supports our own intelligence information.
In the north where the opposition had some presence they would cheat, they massively rigged in Kampala. So those figures were not accurate but for us we didn’t mind because despite being cheated, we won. That’s why we ignored all that. But it is also true that in the 2006 elections, our vote in Teso and Kasese dropped. That was because of the Karamoja rustlers. The people there were blaming us for that. In Kasese it was the Obusinga (the kingdom) issue.
But in the case of Obusinga, they discovered that we were not the problem; it was those fellows who were divided, not us. Now when they agreed, we re-instated the Obusinga. In Teso, it is now very peaceful and you know that it is the NRM which has saved those people from the rustlers of Karamoja who have been tormenting them since the colonial era. The NRM now enjoys a unique status in that region and, therefore, our support is definitely massive.
QN: If the elections were held today, what would you and NRM score?
I saw these opinion polls which were talking of 66 per cent. Our score will be higher than that. My people have not given me their own estimates, but I know it is much more than that 66 per cent they are talking about. It could even go to 80 per cent or even more, because in some areas the opposition has been wiped out. For instance, in Acholi there is no more opposition because we have won over all the people. In Lango, Busoga and Teso, many have defected to us.
QN: You are saying that the opposition cheated in 2006, yet the Supreme Court ruled that the NRM cheated. Isn't that so?
The problem is that many of you are not serious. You people in the papers and all these wonderful people running up and down. There is no way the NRM could cheat because when you look at the structure of the electoral body, it comprises mainly the civil service. The civil service is mainly anti-NRM-- you know that. And these are the people who were polling officials to organise and cheat for the opposition.
NRM is mainly two forces; the peasants and the armed forces, but the civil service is part of the old structure under which the cheating thrived. The EC did not have money to hire permanent service that is why they had to borrow--the CAOs became the returning officers, for example.
But now NRM has got more cadres because when we came from the bush, it was mainly a peasant force. We had few elites and many of them were swallowed by the army. Even when you talk of corruption, we didn’t have people who were corrupt, it is civil service. The problem of the NRM was that it did not have its own elite cadres; they had fought the war of guns but now who could fight the white collar war? We didn’t have enough manpower.
That is why we had to select a few areas like Revenue Authority and first clear that by putting our own cadres, some young people with integrity that is why you find the tax body is performing well. We had to eventually move into police by letting some army officers in there. That is how the police is beginning to improve.
So, on the question of cheating, there is no way NRM can cheat, because that is not our way of thinking. We despise cheating and why should we cheat? We are so popular. Even those courts are not serious, they are just there but we just ignore them. Secondly, we didn't have the machinery even if we wanted to cheat[laughs]. So anybody talking like that is talking rubbish and may be he has just landed from the moon.
QN: Other presidential contenders have faulted you for failing to fix a proper health system, deliver good education and tackle corruption. What explains NRM’s failure to deliver on these issues?
Unfortunately, those opposition leaders are talking like children of seven or eight years. Anybody who knows Uganda should talk of economic recovery because given the way Uganda had collapsed there is no way we can talk about roads without economic recovery when all those things are done with money. Where does the revenue come from? What was the state of the economy in 1986? So somebody talking about health, are you going to use witchcraft to deal with it or money?
So, if you are honest, talk about economic recovery first. In fact, it's a miracle. The Buganda say akalya amagwa…. the animal that eats thorns is the one that knows how it does it because it is a miracle how an animal that eats thorns does not chock in it. The miracle is that NRM has been able to make Uganda recover and not only recover but use the recovery to solve some of the social economic problems; not all, but some. There is no way we can address health and education without the economy recovering first.
And I want to inform anybody who has been under anesthesia--who has not been following what was happening--that the economy has recovered so much that take, for instance, the revenue collections in 1986 were Shs5 billion but now we are collecting shs5,000 billion. In other words, our revenue is now 1,000 times more than it was in 1986.
When you talk of this without talking of the starting point, you are not honest. You are a liar. What was the starting point and what distance has been covered? Health has got two parts, one part is prevention, that has done very well that is why diseases like polio are no longer known in Uganda, whooping cough, tetanus, small pox, all these diseases are not known.
Secondly, we have built health units in many places. In my New Year’s speech, I gave out the details of that, for instance, I was born in this area of Ntungamo. That area is now almost two districts; Ntungamo and half of Mbarara--Rwampara. That area of ours was dark; there were only three dispensaries in that zone--Kinoni, Rubaale, and Rwashamaire. Later they added another small one called Kitwe making them four at the time of independence. But now almost every sub-county has got a health centre. In my speech I talked about 870 something health centre IIIs, the sub-counties are 1,000 something, there are about 200 or 150 which may not have health centres yet, but we have plans to address all this.
Immunization has worked very well and the health infrastructure is standard. But the problem is that much as the infrastructure is in place, the human capital is average. Some of the health workers are corrupt, they work carelessly with negligence, they steal government drugs. All this goes back to the old question of courtesy because NRM did not have cadres on that side; we inherited what we found and they had no supervision even.
Now we have our own cadres who at least have started with supervision. I think you have seen in the papers that medical staff has been arrested. Now the NRM is just beginning to peep into the medical service sector at least at the monitoring level.
We are tired of these old managers but we are now able to monitor them. Health work is not like army where we train people in a year and they become useful. It takes very long, what do we do? Be patient, go and study; that’s what I told them, get your first degree, go back for a Masters and then we shall have to take on these people. And yes, we are beginning to take them on.
And you will see, just like we trained the army, we are going to make the medical services better. But it takes longer because the gestation period; the time it takes to train a medical worker is much longer. I have also set up a monitoring unit for civil engineering, for road works, to monitor and study work.
QN: Why has the NRM failed to produce visible able leaders to succeed you? If you stepped down, who is likely to take over from you?
No, the problem is that you are putting the cart before the horse. In NRM we don’t think about leadership historically, we think about contribution. If you have a house on fire, let us put out the fire, so how many are we here; we are eight. So all eight of us get out and start fighting the fire. And as we put out the fire, we shall see the one who is very active, very strong and next time when there is a fire, we shall say this one was very active the other day.
So for us leadership comes from work, it doesn’t come from favouritism, saying you; you are the one am grooming. No, that is not NRM. How did our leadership come? It came through fighting and we could have died all those years when we were fighting and some of those colleagues of ours died so those who died where are they in the leadership? So if you have got a political force which puts work before positions, then you will be able to understand the NRM.
We are working, people are working, old and new members are working and out of these we will see who is leading in putting out the fire. Because if you do it in any other way, you are sort of distorting the process.
QN: If you win the election, in 2016, you will have been president for 30 years. Would this next term be your last?
I don't tell my plans to Atuhaire. It would be gross for me to reveal my plans to Atuhaire who works for a paper which is not friendly to the NRM. The answer; is we shall cross the bridge when we get there.
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