I have been lamenting Uganda’s floundering democracy all my adult life. With respect to elections, here is what I wrote years ago in “Where’s the Outrage?! Opposition Leaders Doing Hard Time During Elections,” December 30, 2006.
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Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni is no more a democratic pioneer in Africa than Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak is in the Middle East. Yet Western leaders routinely lavish Museveni with praise for his democratic leadership.
In “Another Commonwealth Summit on Trade Ends with Imperial Promises but no Guarantees,” November 29, 2005, I noted with derision that:
Delegates spent almost as much time defending their decision to allow Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni to host their next summit, as they did spinning the platitudes about trade and good governance contained in their joint Communiqué into something approximating substantive achievement.
Except that their decision was indefensible. Because, only weeks before this summit, Museveni had opposition leader Kizza Besigye arrested on a battery of charges ranging from terrorism to rape. More to the point, these Commonwealth leaders knew full well that Museveni timed Besigye’s arrest to prevent him from running in national elections scheduled for next February.
Yet they not only refused to censure Museveni; they reaffirmed their intent to allow him to host their summit in 2007. The damning irony of treating his re-election as a fait accompli seemed completely lost on them.
So, where’s the outrage?
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Now, again with respect to elections, here is what Al Jazeera reported on Monday:
Ugandan opposition leader Kizza Besigye has been bundled into a van outside his home by police as his supporters planned a march to protest against the results of a presidential election.
The Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) party leader had been under heavy police guard since he was placed under house arrest on Saturday, shortly before the election results were announced.
President Yoweri Museveni, who seized power as the leader of a rebellion in 1986, was returned to power with 60.8 percent of the vote. Besigye secured 35.4 percent, according to the electoral commission.
Alas, plus ca change.
Incidentally, I have been lamenting Zimbabwe’s floundering democracy too. The parallels are uncanny. In fact, elections there have seen President Robert Mugabe treat opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai much as Museveni treats Besigye. I bemoaned the despairing dynamics of the former relationship in many commentaries, including “World Is ‘Shocked, Shocked’ that Mugabe Had Opposition Leader Beaten and Arrested,” March 15, 2007, “Mugabe Makes Dictator’s Pitch for Re-election,” March 29, 2008, and “It’s Hail, Mugabe! Again,” August 4, 2013.
In any event, the Obama administration registered pro forma complaints about election irregularities, which included shutting down social media. But there’s no gainsaying that Obama is just as pleased to see Museveni win this rigged election as his predecessors were to see Museveni win previous ones … by any means necessary.
Granted, given the chaos that followed democratic revolutions against Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, one can hardly blame him. Obama is still trying to wash blood off the hand he had in overthrowing them, after all. He learned the hard way that, when it comes to Third World dictatorships, it’s better to support the dictator you know than the revolutionaries you don’t.
As it happens, this is a lesson some of us have been trying to teach from day one of the ill-fated Arab Spring:
With all due respect to the protesters, the issue is not whether Mubarak will go, for he will. (The man is 82 and already looks half dead for Christ’s sake!) Rather, the question is: Who will replace him? And it appears they have not given any thought whatsoever to this very critical question.
The devil Egyptians know might prove far preferable to the devil they don’t. Just ask the Iranians who got rid of the Mubarak-like Shah in 1979 only to end up with the Ayatollah — whose Islamic revolution they’ve regretted (and have longed to overturn) ever since….
(“Army Pledges No Force Against Protesters,” The iPINIONS Journal, February 1, 2011)
Of course, Obama not only abandoned Mubarak but bombed Gaddafi. This is why dictators and potentates across Africa and the Middle East can be forgiven for looking to Russian President Vladimir Putin as a more reliable superpower patron.
Not to mention the extent to which Putin is going these days to show why he just might be. Specifically, he’s bombing the hell out of opposition forces in Syria to spare his puppet dictator, Bashir al-Assad of Syria, the fate that befell Mubarak and Gaddafi.
All the same, I’ve become as chastened by political corruption in Africa as I’ve been for years by sectarian strife in the Middle East; not least because political intervention in the former has proved every bit as feckless, if not counterproductive, as military intervention in the latter.
This is why I have advocated for benign neglect in such commentaries as “Sunnis, Shias, and Kurds Fighting for Control of Iraq. Stay Out, America!” June 19, 2014, “Demystifying ISIS: the Case against Obama’s Bush-Lite War on Terrorism,” September 10, 2014, “Fatal Assistance … Oxymoron Intended,” February 3, 2015, and “Global Fight against ‘Extreme Poverty,’” October 21, 2015.
Accordingly, I reiterate that the United States should leave countries in those regions to their own devices; that is, just as Europe left the United States to its own devices in the decades following independence. Moreover, self-righteous and interventionist Americans would do well to remember that it took a civil war and 100 years of enforcing Apartheid-like laws before America became the America it is today.
It might seem incomprehensible that countries in Africa and the Middle East could emulate the United States in this respect. If left to their own devices, however, I suspect they would establish the means of self-preservation and peaceful coexistence in less than half that time.
Related commentaries:
Dissidents hard time…
Hail, Mugabe…
Army pledges no force…
Sunnis, Shias, Kurds…
Demystifying ISIS…
Fatal assistance…
Extreme poverty…