Was Amama Mbabazi Forced Into A Political Contest Against President Museveni?

Was Amama Mbabazi Forced Into A Political Contest Against President Museveni?

• Its unlikely That Amama Would Have Contested For The Presidency If He Had Not Been sacked as PM and SG Respectively
• There Is No Evidence To Prove That He Was Building a power base Prior To the Kyankwanzi Resolution 
• Amama wouldn't have propagated and agitated for the public management act if he was nursing presidential ambitions

When john Patrick Amama Mbabazi was announcing his presidential bid on YouTube, he looked like a man struggling to chat with his mother in-law-a known taboo in African culture.

You could see that he was trying his level best to generate courage from the innermost part of his soul to announce the presidential bid.  At one time he looked as if he was not breathing.

I instinctively deduced that he was speaking from a teleprompter so as to avoid contradiction because his eyes were fixed on the screen.

Even his written speech for the bid had a lot of typos, a sign that he was panicking while drafting the statement. But all the same, his announcement was a relief to many who had yearned for it for a very long time.

Background Check

But when you do background check on Amama’s presidential bid, you will find signs that show that probably JPAM was probably forced into this presidential race.

First of the entire message he submitted as a motivation for contesting for the presidency was not as powerful or compelling as expected. Otherwise, if he had prepared himself for a very long time, you could have noticed it from the strength of the message that motivated him to stand.

Anyone will tell you that his eight point program is not as compelling as it should have been. I tend to think that it’s not a message from a man who has harbored presidential ambitions for a very longtime.

Amama’s eight point manifesto shows that there was not enough research done- a sign that he was forced into crafting one to fit with the circumstances.

Even his interview on the BBC with Allan Kasuja is more of a surface analysis of what he intends to do when he becomes president of the republic.  He sounds more as someone lamenting rather than providing a solution to the challenges faced by the country.

Of course one can say that Amama has got a more vivid campaign arsenal of well designed t-shirts, posters, songs and a slogan that goes with it.

But campaign materials don’t require a lot of input. All you need is choice of color, in which case he had yellow at his disposal and a willing artist and printer to produce them.

We have all talked about Amama’s long silence and hesitation at announcing his presidential bid but we have ignored that fact that perhaps the man was probably not prepared to take on his longtime friend.

Amama has known president Museveni for the last forty years. It was therefore always going to be very difficult for him to come out and challenge him in a bloody political contest.

Remember, they say that politics is war without bloodshed, while war is politics with bloodshed.

So Amama really needed a ‘compeller’ to push him into a political duel with the man who gave him an opportunity to serve in a various juicy political posts in the NRM government.

Many of the NRM officials say that they were not surprised by Amama’s presidential bid.

Of course you cannot make someone a secretary general and prime minister and you don’t expect him to harbor bigger ambitions. In fact , in more civilized democracies, a secretary general normally ends up taking the presidency.

Absolute Contradiction

But during his reign as secretary general, Amama never exhibited signs that proved that he carried presidential ambitions.

As secretary general he had the chance to make a countrywide network by staging rallies that would propel his presidential ambitions.

But I don’t remember him making country wide tours as SG of the NRM party. I don’t remember him opening up party branches which he could have taken advantage of as his political machinery across the country.

I don’t remember him gracing big events or rallies to raise his political aspirations.

How then did he look ambitious without engaging in any ambitious activities?

As a matter of fact, I think the presidential ambitions were practically imposed on him.

Why do I say so?

Because If Amama had shelved presidential ambitions, he would never have signed the Kyankwanzi resolution that endorsed president Museveni as the sole candidate for NRM.

He would never have gone on electronic media to tell the world that he will never run against president Museveni. He would have avoided getting involved in NRM party activities that endorsed president Museveni.

If Amama had underlying presidential ambitions, he would have resigned as secretary general, on the day of the Kyankwanzi resolution.

He would also have resigned as prime minister and immediately embarked on the process of undermining the Museveni candidature and promoting his.
Adn most importantly of all, if JPAM was nursing ambitions ,he would never have pioneered the public management bill ( now an act) which would make it impossible to stage political rallies. 
He wouldn't  have propagated for the law that allowed government to tap peoples phones because he would be conscious of the fact that he was about to leave government and take it on as an opponent.
Even the long time he took to make a declaration shows that perhaps he wasn't nursing any aspirations.

The Compelling Factors

But many things happened that could have compelled JPAM to compete against Museveni.

And one of them was the heckling he suffered at Kyankwanzi where he was called all sorts of names.

The heckling which including calling names like snake, traitor was also followed by his sacking as secretary general and eventually as prime minister.

Then the political atmosphere for him became inevitable for him to shun the temptation to announce his candidate with many Ugandans calling on him to run against president Museveni.

Many of you have not sat down to internalize what would have happened if president Museveni had probably not sacked JPAM as secretary general and prime minister respectively.

But the obvious answer is that Amama would not have contested against president Museveni if he had not been sacked and picked out for heckling.
 

And the reason is simple; JPAM has lived in the comfort zone for so long that its highly unlikely that he would have sacrificed his privileges as SG and PM to run as presidential candidate.

Secondly, Amama doesn’t exude the character of an African politician who lies low for votes.

Anybody who has associated with him closely will tell you that he is a little bit aloof and doesn’t have the universal tolerance that an African politician must have to win the mandate of the masses.

Thirdly, Amama knows how unpopular he is with the bush war generals of the NRM that he couldn’t have dared to come out to challenge president Museveni who has been shielding him from their wrath.  His main undoing is that he never practically participated in the bush war that brought the NRM to power.

During the bush war is known to have been accused of enjoying privileges of the struggle, earning himself the nickname karyasausage( he who eats sausages) to amplify the lavish life he enjoyed in the diaspora.

Although he later countered those accusations by renaming himself karyaburo ( he who eats millet), many bush war fighters who are still alive have very little regard for him for his absolute failure to appear in the warzones. Although he was known to be part of the external wing of the bush war struggle, there was a unanimous view that the external wing failed to execute the war to the expectations of everyone concerned.

And since he was the part of the external wing that had failed in its mandate, it took him a very longtime to get a big post in the immediate NRM government that swore to power in 1986.

He only rose systematically through the ranks when general elections started to make president Museveni desperate for legal brains like him.  

That’s why you realize that while the likes of Maj Gen Jim Muhwezi and Maj Gen Kahinda Ottafire initially enjoyed big ministerial positions , Amama was not anywhere near a big cabinet post.

Museveni later started having a fondness for Amama and propelled him to bigger cabinet posts because the times had changed from the bush war mentality to the tricky terrain of political engineering that involved elections.

That’s why JPAM was honestly saying that he was not intending to run for president as long as president Museveni was involved because he was grateful for the olive branch that was extended to him.

All this shows that probably, Amama was forced into the presidential race by the ever changing political circumstances that were beyond his control.

family pressure?/
one can ask , but what about the background political work of his wife Jacqueline and sister in law Hope Mwesigye and another one in the diaspora called Alice Ruhindi?

Yes they have been mobilizing for Amama but when you look at the timing of the campaigns of these ladies you will realize that they started the political mobilization soon after the announcement of the Kyankwanzi resolution.

The voice recordings which implicated Jacqueline into mobilizing for her husband Amama's bid are less than a year old. if Jacqueline had 

So therefore, ladies and gentlemen, I beg to go, but with the hope that you will not misunderstand what am trying to say. But the question is whether JPAM had all along nursed presidential ambitions or not. And my submission so far is that there is scanty evidence to prove that HE harbored ANY PRESIDENTIAL AMBITIONS prior to the pronouncement of the Kyankwanzi resolution.

Ends

The author Fred Daka Kamwada-Kamwada is a senior journalist and blogger. you can reach him on kamwadafred@yahoo.com