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TIMOTHY KALYEGIRA
Former confidants become outspoken critics
On April 21, President Yoweri Museveni was the special guest on the town-hall discussion programme Mambo Bado of the Buganda kingdom's CBS FM.
He requested to appear on the show in the face of rising unrest in Uganda. The last time he appeared on Mambo Bado, Museveni came in person to the station's premises at Bulange, Mengo.
Many CBS listeners came from as far away as Jinja and Masaka in order to be within sight of the President so as to ask burning questions that have been on their minds to him directly.
To the disappointment of the assembled crowd, however, Museveni did not appear and instead conducted the show from State House, Nakasero. So great was the disappointment of the crowd that many simply stood up and walked away.
They wanted to ask the President directly and nothing else. Sensing that the mood was going to be hostile, the moderator and Member of Parliament for Mityana South, Jerome Ssozi Kaddumukasa, repeatedly appealed to the listeners to be calm and behave themselves.
No sooner had the show begun and Museveni was open to questions, than the undercurrent of hostility asserted itself. Loud, aggressive, impatient questions came from nearly all those given the chance to speak.
The core audience of CBS FM is the ordinary urban trader, peasant farmer, taxi driver and conductor, market vendor, boda boda cyclist, and what the marketing and advertising industry terms the CDE rural and semi-urban social class, which is the majority of Ugandans.
In order to gauge how deep ran the undercurrent of resentment at the NRM regime and President Museveni in particular in the wake of the discontent over the proposed sale of Mabira forest, few other opportunities could have been better than a CBS FM show.
But there was something else striking about the tone of the debaters at Bulange --- the absence of fear. Had Kaddumukasa not kept insisting on décor and respect of the head of state, the programme would have gotten out of hand.
The listeners directing questions at Museveni were not afraid of him and did not appear to be intimidated by the fact that they were addressing a head of state. This was interesting in a sense that it is contrary to the culture of the Baganda, which stresses deference to authority, polite speaking in public, and a subtle way of expressing one's anger.
And yet here was an audience of ordinary people speaking in a militant and aggressive way to Museveni.
This is one of the most striking and astonishing changes in Ugandan society over the past two years. It is important to put this new boldness within its historical bounds and context.
What sustained Museveni in power more than anything else for 21 years was the aura of invincibility that he and his regime emitted.
True he created an army that easily defeated many of its foes and an intelligence system that was efficient enough to ward off any coups for two decades. But the one key factor that kept many Ugandans from even thinking about confronting the Museveni regime --- never mind trying to unseat it --- was that widespread impression in the general public that unlike his predecessors, Museveni was immune from military coups.
Ugandans had seen various rebel uprisings against him in the north, northeast, and western Uganda fail in their tracks.
When the RPF invaded Rwanda in October 1990 and went on less than four years later to capture power in Kigali and two years later a combined NRA and RPA force helped remove from power the long-standing dictator Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, Museveni's actual or would-be opponents in and out of Uganda were overcome by both fear and a sense of fatalistic resignation: this man was invincible.
This is what makes the mood on Saturday at CBS all the more out of the ordinary. The fear factor was absent.
During the show, the former Kampala MP and cabinet minister Captain Francis Babu, who insists that he is still a member of the ruling National Resistance Movement party, asked Museveni the sort of blunt and embarrassing questions that would have been inconceivable just six months ago.
Babu's questions more or less suggested that Museveni is a man not to be trusted. Why was the Uganda Commercial Bank, the largest bank in the country, sold for much less than Nile Bank a newer and much smaller bank?
If the Mehta Group claims that it wants to take part of Mabira and in exchange plant trees elsewhere as compensation, why not then in the first place take their sugarcane plantation to that elsewhere if it exists? And so on.
The type and calibre of questions from the CBS listeners told one thing: they were intended to put Museveni in a corner and as far as possible, embarrass him. They were trick questions.
In hindsight, it was perhaps wise for Museveni not to have appeared in person for the Mambo Bado show, given the level of hostility and the embarrassment that would have caused him.
The following day's Sunday Monitor led with a headline that read "Cabinet plots to defeat Museveni on Mabira" a headline that requires no explanation.
What all this means for Uganda is that a certain line has been crossed for which there is no turning back.
Demonstrations by a public no longer intimidated by teargas and the sight of armed police and soldiers; a well-coordinated SMS and Internet campaign urging the public to boycott the Lugazi sugar of Mehta; a cabinet in a state of open rebellion against the president; opposition parties that are countering every move by the state; and turmoil within the ruling NRM party.
When the cabinet openly defies the president and NRM politicians like Babu ask questions whose only purpose can be to publicly embarrass the president, it shows two things.
The first is that they are prepared for any outcome such as being sacked by Museveni and have already worked out a Plan B should that happen, usually meaning a move to the opposition.
This happened in 2002 when whole sections of the ruling KANU party of President Daniel arap Moi openly defied him and within months had crossed over to a coalition of opposition parties.
Or secondly, it means the cabinet members and ruling party politicians have weighed the public mood, weighed their options, and determined that this anger is real and growing and so it makes better political sense to side with the angry public than a rapidly diminishing president.
Either way, it points a finger to very interesting months ahead for Uganda that will be marked by unprecedented political turmoil in the government.
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