By Oweyegha Afunaduula
This article is a Treatise ( i.e., a long and serious piece of writing) by a person grounded in science but with a good understanding of social and political issues. It will require people who are open-minded and ready to change their minds to accommodate new insights.
It is a comparative analysis of two militarily developed minds: one of a modern European ruler and one of a modernizing Ugandan ruler of the late 20th Century and early 21st Century. It is written as if the long-ruling leader of Uganda is no longer in power.
It is, therefore, in the past tense. It will help history writers interested in comparative history of rulers and their countries. I will not be there when they are writing, but I will have contributed to the written history beforehand.
There is nothing in the Universe that cannot be compared.
The reason we compare is to find out the differences and similarities between the items that we seek to compare. In academispeak, this is comparative analysis. Comparative analysis is most useful when it involves critical thinking and critical analysis of what are being compared.
Only that way can useful knowledge, wisdom, understanding and insight be generated about what is being compared or the interaction between them. It is possible for what are being compared to be separated by a long spell of time and to interact by remote sensing.
For example, we can compare someone who existed in the 19th Century with someone existing today. This is what I want to do in this article by comparing France’s Modern European ruler, Napoleon Bonaparte, and Uganda’s self proclaimed modernizing ruler, Tibuhaburwa Museveni.
Much of what was happening in Uganda under President Museveni’s reign did happen under Napoleon Bonaparte in France in the 19th Century. Napoleon made himself Emperor through manipulation. Museveni was never proclaimed emperor but ruled like an Emperor.
Napoleon Bonaparte and Tibuhaburwa Museveni have both been referred to as militaristic dictators who relied more on the gun to rule and extend their military adventures in neighboring countries, but were such adroit rulers that they couched their dictatorships in democratic cover to conceal their excesses in the exercise of power and authority in the countries they ruled.
However, while Napoleon BonaParte was not hired by other countries to extend their imperialist designs on other countries, Tibuhaburwa Museveni was, and did commit his army to proxy wars in places like Somalia and South Sudan. Otherwise, the two men were masters at political manipulation, political trickery and political deception.
They could say one thing when they meant the other, and many people fell prey to their manipulations, trickery and deceptions. The countries they ruled were completely at their mercy. They would either rise or fall with them.
One thing is true.
The two men ruled countries in which they were not born. They were both good political strategists in their rise to power. They associated with men of influence within the countries they were set to rule, subsequently subduing resistance to their rule through deception and constitutional engineering. Constitutional engineering concentrated all power and authority in their hands to do anything they wanted.
In the case of Tibuhaburwa Museveni he introduced in Uganda a new indigenous group of Rwandese among the indigenous groups in the country to ensure they accessed the same opportunities as, or even more than, the traditional indigenous groups While Napoleon Bonaparte maintained that he was the true representative of France and the embodiment of democracy.
Tibuhaburwa Museveni had a similar attitude; he maintained that Uganda had its owner (himself) and that no one could teach him democracy (meaning that democracy started with him and ended with him). They two men allowed representative democracy so long as it did not change the political status quo dominated by themselves.
Napoleon Bonaparte engineered a Parliament of 1000 Members, over which he had full control, while Tibuhaburwa Museveni engineered a Parliament he had extreme influence peddling over, and which the time of writing this article had expanded from 80 to 529 Members of Parliament, and was set to expand to higher numbers.
Both men did not care about quality of legislation. Indeed Tibuhaburwa Museveni remarked that he did not care if the Members of Parliament slept during legislation so long as they woke up in time to vote his wishes and choices.
He exercised extreme influence peddling through the political strategy of National Resistance Movement (NRM) Parliamentary Caucus to which he ensured some 10 military chiefs also belonged and ascribed to his Party – the National Resistance Movement Organization (NRMO), although the Constitution barred serving members of the army from partisan politics or from serving in political stations. This way he undermined the aspirations of Ugandans of having a non-partisan army and a one not linked to a political party.
To Be Continued…….
For God and My Country.
The Writer Is a Ugandan Scientist And Environmentalist
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