Mr Amama Mbabazi emerged out of the presidential election a victor. The veteran politician walked out of a gruelling three month campaign period more cleansed than bruised; scoring moral points he may as well never have ever scored had he stuck to President Museveni’s service. This is why:
Critics of President Museveni, whether basing on his economics or democratic credentials as parameters to assess his 30-year reign, have for long paired him with one of his Mr Fix it.
The story of Museveni’s failures, unlike his successes, has always been complete with men like Mbabazi in the equation. And yet society has a way it closes one eye to our chequered past and opens its arms if we preach change as did the Biblical Saul later Paul.
Edward Lowassa, who gave new Tanzania president John Magufuli a run for his money, had had his name soiled in multimillion dollar scandals during his tenure as prime minister but how Tanzanians, including opposition that largely kept punching Lowasa’s credibility as prime minister, shifted criticism to support is intriguing.
That is where Mbabazi registered himself a victory. For the better part of his time as prime minister, Mbabazi’s time on the floor of Parliament was characterised by heckling from MPs such as the late Cerinah Nebanda and Ibrahim Ssemujju Nganda, always chanting, “Temangalo” in relation to the controversial land transaction that almost dealt Mbabazi’s political career a blow.
Today his yesterday critics speak in less harsh tones and now see him as an ally in the anti-Museveni struggle.
Rude shocker
The statistics from the general election remain a slap on Mbabazi’s face, a rude shocker to journalists, pundits and political actors who created the impression Mbabazi was the man sent from heaven to finish a job Dr Kizza Besigye has since 2001 “failed to accomplish.”
Timothy Kalyegira, a columnist with this newspaper, once wrote that Mbabazi was the man to give Mr Museveni the knockout punch.
There were stories, told in broadcast and print media, of how the man from Kanungu was the choice of the West, particularly the United States, the United Kingdom, as well as Asian power houses like China and the Arab world with United Arab Emirates high on the list.
In an interview with the Observer, Besigye was asked to comment on claims that the West had shifted its focus from him to Mbabazi.
The retired colonel said the struggle for a better Uganda was for Ugandans, not foreigners to fight, but didn’t rule out partnering with friends of that struggle.
At The Democratic Alliance (TDA) process to arrive at a single candidate for the Opposition to take on Museveni, every word and deed from the principals at TDA pointed to Mbabazi as a pre-anointed choice whom Besigye, a tested and proven Museveni challenger with verifiable support since 2001, should throw his weight behind.
And then stories were told of how Mbabazi has insider knowledge of the inner workings of every detail of our security apparatus, right from his heydays as a Fronasa winger to National Resistance Army secret operations, stretching to his post-1986 roles as director External Security Organisation, junior Defence minister, Security minister and eventually prime minister.
With these contacts built over a 40 year period, coupled with external backing, with stories told of how America’s Federal Bureau of Investigations, Israel’s MOSSAD, UK’s M16, and the Vatican’s intelligence antennae followed Mbabazi’s movements and no harm could be done to him, the world was told, Mbabazi was “the thing” as Justice James Ogoola would say.
And then came the money tales. Tabloid after tabloid screamed how Mbabazi had received millions of dollars from USA’s powerful gay lobby group, how Chinese and Dubai businessmen had channelled a fortune that could run the Museveni financial muscle thin.
Speaking on Capital Gang, Mbabazi said “I have the money to run the campaign to its maximum” as though to validate claims he had, as MP Ssemujju said on that talk show, “more space for money than people to pass in his house”.
Mr Mbabazi, in the words of a close family member this reporter talked to, “has an image of a god, a superior being, a superstar, and it works for him even when most of what is said is not true”.
But as in Richard Sheridan’s play School for scandal, the whole project seemed to be stuck in the web of appearances vs reality.
Ugandans, it appears, especially those disillusioned with the Museveni regime, are like a drowning man who will clutch on a straw, sometimes reasoning with despair and falling short of interrogating even what appears obviously doubtable.
Mr Olara Otunnu perhaps compares to Mbabazi in the sense of how much excitement he caused when he walked out of the United Nations, bringing to an end a high flying diplomatic career that nearly got him the secretary general slot that Ghana’s Kofi Anan took.
If Otunnu came down to Uganda, we heard, it is game over for Museveni. Mr Otunnu did not vote himself in the 2011 election and seems to have been plunged into the edge.
Gen David Sejusa too, after his controversial letter, got some sympathy and hype around how much he could perform. Today, he is in Luzira prison facing a host of service offences at the General Court Martial.
First, therefore, the arousal Mbabazi stirred can be seen through the prism of a people hungry for anything that appears able to break the camel’s back, sometimes though, we overestimate the magnitude of the stroke and underestimate the size of the camel’s back.
So was Mbabazi a phantom?
Mr Aggrey Awori contested for the presidency in 2001 and scored what Mbabazi harvested in 2016, 1.4 per cent of the vote.
Contacted by this newspaper for a comment on Friday, Mr Awori first laughed and said: “Firstly, Mbabazi has been demystified; he was a balloon that took a little bit of a pin to burst.
He was not on ground. How do you contest for national office without structures? In every polling station you should get at last 10 votes from your agents, but in some stations he got two votes or even zero, meaning he had no agents in most stations.”
Mr Godber Tumushabe, who offered TDA technical input and warmed up to the Mbabazi ‘phantom’, told this reporter the TDA thought process rotated around leveraging on Besigye’s popularity and harnessing that with Mbabazi’s “organisational infrastructure and superior skills at mobilising resources”, but this did not seem to be backed by evidence.
What we read as Mbabazi’s organisational infrastructure, it appears, was a shadow of the arsenal he was able to bring forward in his days around Museveni which comes easier with access to State resources.
Mr Awori says: “All along he survived on Museveni who put him there and sustained him and when he went away he was exposed.”
Veteran politician and Uganda Peoples Congress senior member James Rwanyarare told this newspaper in a previous interview, as did his colleague and former minister in Obote II government Yona Kanyomozi, “Mbabazi is like the moon that reflects light from the sun and when the sun is withdrawn the moon loses its shine.”
Dr Rwanyarare said: “In 2011, the voters told Museveni that they don’t want Mbabazi but he told them that they are voting him, not Mbabazi, so they should not ditch Mbabazi.”
Mbale success
After he gathered a mammoth crowd in Mbale, at the start of his consultative meetings, Mr Mbabazi in an interview with NBS TV derided as “foolish” people who had compared him to the moon, boasting of how he has spent decades in politics and would silence all those who ridiculed him as a man with no following.
And, indeed, he sure pulled crowds in Arua, Kitgum, Mukono, Masaka, Jinja, parts of Lango which seemed to morale boost him. Unlike Besigye, however, Mbabazi’s oratory skills always came calling, but the gods of eloquence seemed to abandon him when he needed them most.
Sometimes he struggled to speak in Luganda, a language Museveni and Besigye speak fluently, and resorted to MP Medard Ssegona’s translation.
When he attempted to touch base with the ordinary folk, he pulled off a dance stroke with a musician on the rostrum, joked with voters, hugged what senior presidential adviser John Nagenda once called the “unwashed of the slums” but it all appeared a little too late.
Here he faced a challenge from Besigye and Museveni, who just like FDC secretary general Nandala Mafabi have the gift of people skills, recalling by name their remotest agent’s name and reaching out to them.
Awori thinks Mbabazi’s own personality of a man who is “too elitist and not sociable” left him and the voter millions of mile out of touch.
And yet some Ugandans, accustomed to flip floppers in politics, to this day still think Mbabazi and Museveni are up to a game. Mbabazi, therefore, still has trust issues.
Some choose not to trust him because of his record in government, as Rwanyarare says: “If there is any problem we have had as a country, from the Public Order Management Act, phone tapping law, muzzling of political space and other freedoms, they have been designed and executed by Mbabazi. I cannot see how we can turn to such a person as alternative leadership.”
Makerere University law don, Prof John Jean Barya, told this newspaper in an interview:
“In a sense, Besigye has benefited from the Mbabazi factor, precisely because Mbabazi has been so close to the President and people are not so sure that he is a new person that can be trusted. So they are willing to give him votes, but they are sure of Kizza Besigye that he is tested and means what he says.
There are question marks about Mbabazi and that is what has given him problems. But nonetheless, he has that significant contribution in terms of being part of the process for change.”
Mr Kanyomozi opines that Mbabazi’s insistence on NRM was a miscalculation too. “He wanted to inherit one part of the balance sheet of the NRM. How do you inherit assets and run away from liabilities? He wasn’t clear, he should have moved away at once,” the ex-minister says.
At Kamwenge Primary School playground, Mr Mbabazi told voters, “I want to tell you that I am a member of NRM, but the NRM which is free from corruption and with economic and political stability.”
Some of the people, especially in the Opposition, human rights movement and civil society who listened to Mbabazi looked at the scars they incurred, thanks to NRM, and that seemed to be their departure point from his aspiration.
To this section, NRM is like a car, written off by traffic police and in dangerous mechanical condition and to insist on delivering passengers to the promised land using the same car, by merely changing drivers, did not seem to add up.
Mr Awori also doubts Mbabazi’s hyped knowledge of security, “When he was State minister for Defence, I was in Opposition and I remember we would take him on security matters and he was always not knowledgeable.
How do you serve as ESO chief, Defence minister and Security minister without even a handful of junior officers following you?”
“Yes, he had intelligence but intelligence without gun powder has never overthrown any government. He was good as Museveni’s administrative assistant, fix this, write minutes of the other meeting but in elective politics he cannot score much.”
Mr Mbabazi had always told journalists to watch the space and wait for the day his followers in NRM come out. Only one MP from Sebei region, who lost in the NRM primaries, emerged.
Mr Mbabazi set his eye on the presidency as early as 2006, telling journalist Arinaitwe Rugyendo in a Red Pepper interview (August 9-15 2001), “I would not wish to commit myself to commenting on speculations that I am eyeing the presidency. It is just too early. But yes, the President said I am presidential material.”
At the time he had just been appointed Defence minister. Mr Awori thinks Mbabazi did not use the offices he occupied then, to advance his project.
“He should have done what Obote did in 1965, play with the rules, amend the laws so that you give yourself more powers and take control of critical offices where you can advance your course. But even as Attorney General and prime minister, what much did he do?” says the former Samia Bugwe North MP.
Mbabazi’s lawyer Severino Twinobusingye thinks assessing Mbabazi on the premise of a contested election does not add up.
“This was a fundamentally flawed election right from the start; it went against every letter and spirit of the Constitution with the Electoral Commission, police and other State organs descending into the arena in favour of the incumbent,” Twinobusingye says.
Mr Mbabazi has said the process leading to the election “illuminates that this election was fundamentally flawed and that the announced results were not a reflection of the will of the Ugandan people”.
He harvested 132,574 (1.4 per cent) of the 9,701,738 total votes cast.
To be fair to him, analysts says, Mbabazi, as any other opponent of Museveni, faces a challenge that goes beyond an ordinary election; it is a contest with the State.
To laugh at him is to laugh at a Uganda at cross
