Amama Mbabazi and The Comedy Of Errors.

By Arthur M. M. Katabalwa.

I am not normally drawn in by politics. I tend to get bored easily by the finer details and I try and look at the bigger picture. It is always interesting to see how things pan out given a long period of time to observe events.

Over the last few months, I have watched with bemusement how time and time again the Museveni-Mbabazi saga has been growing. Having watched the NRM regime from its inception, I have always had a fascination with Mbabazi. Of course as a growing lad, I was enameled by the message that a youthful Yoweri Museveni came with on the steps of parliament January 29, 1986. It was fresh. It was bold. It was radical. It was like nothing we had ever heard of before. We believed in the man, the system and all that he stood for. And whereas there is still a yearning for that message, many of the youth today, a majority of which were born under his rule, do not feel the indebtedness that we had to the NRA/NRM for delivering the country from a mess. Of course there are those who have different views on that.

Fast forward to 2015 and things are different. You see, there is a mantra that the establishment uses all the time…”when the NRM came to power in 1986…..” (several versions of appendages follow there after) many, as said above, do not relate to that. There is no reference point. Obote and the others are the stuff that legends are made of. The issue is now and the future.

And this is where my brothers in the NRM are failing to adapt to quickly. Mbabazi is tapping into that desire for a new message. And in so doing, the style is different. This is one of the reasons why, even when Mbabazi may not have anything new to say, he has seemed to be leading the agenda. It is mostly about the style and method of delivery.

Amama Mbabazi

The other night I felt a wave of optimism go through me when, for a brief flicker of time, the government spokesman seemed to change his style. Over the last few weeks and months Ofwono Opondo has led the charge to discredit Mbabazi and to not make a finer point of it the spectacle has been unedifying. Opondo, among others like Onapito and Onyango Obo were the heavy weights in the media when I was making my tentative steps into the media. And yet, with all that experience, he has been bombastic, many times making valid points but the whole message getting lost in his delivery.

Then there was the issue of the President being hauled in front of the media after a return from an AU summit in South Africa to try and explain to a suspicious public why he had called Mbabazi for a meeting. What an un mitigating disaster that was!! Whoever made that decision has no clue in political message delivery tactics for they let HE be seen as tired and irritable. Mbabazi had alluded to a tired system. The message that should have come out of the AU was lost. It was buried. Our chance to strap around on the world scene was shadowed by the public being shown an irritable President. Questions were asked about the merits of a head of state calling a press conference about clearly forged documents. Where was the OC of Old Kampala police station? That is within his pay grade. Not HE!

And there after the security services have not helped the situation either. Granted, they may be acting within the law but there is what they should be aware of. Political expediency. For the security services to act and to be seen as though they are in cahoots with the ruling government is a dent on their professionalism. We have been fed on an almost daily dose of perceived police brutality all this falling in the hands of the opposition.

Mr. Mbabazi has clearly got questions to answer. He has been part of the NRM machine for a long time so for him to distance himself from some of the failures is going to surpass Houdini in politics. We await eagerly to see how he does this. But on the other hand Uganda is no longer at war. We have an unstable region around us with terrorist groups wanting to shatter our peace. But someone in government needs to look, learn and plan proper reactions to the opposition challenging its power. Their reaction is almost predictable. It is like telling time itself. Challenge the regime and tear gas, batons and all sorts come out. I know one way that the regime can win without being accused of foul play. Change your delivery style. We have seen repeated mistakes made by the government with Amama Mbabazi clearing all news programs while he has not even said a word.