Humanist

Today’s daily writing prompt is so profoundly relevant to myself and I believe my fellow Ugandans. We are in political campaign season, after all.

Those wanting to get elected as chairpersons of district local governments, members of parliament (MPs) and the President have begun to launch their campaigns for the upcoming 2026 elections.

The first time I voted in political elections in our country was in 1996. I did so again, three times, at intervals of five years. And then I stopped. Why? I was always voting for the wrong reasons:

“”Mr. President, some, including me who voted for you in 1996, in 2001, in 2006 and in 2011, are of the view that Dr. Besigye’s egotistical, abrasive, confrontational and bulldozer style tendencies repulsed a significant section of Uganda’s undecided voters who chose to vote for you, for the wrong reason. A reason, Mr. President, which fits within the logic of the English idiom “better the devil you know than the devil you don’t””.

This I wrote in 2016 in a very long blog post titled: “Letter to President Museveni”. I invite you to access it and read to contextualize my decision no longer to vote in political elections, in my country at least.

I know a school of thought that critiques us who have chosen no longer to waste our time voting in political elections in our country.

While they are entitled to their opinion, I disagree with them that my not voting brings in and sustains the wrong leaders in the institutions of national governance in our country.

He came into power by coup d’etat; obtained legitimacy by political elections; and nearly four decades later he is seemingly maintaining power via self-coup, facilitated, among others, by questionable political elections.

And the reason he is able to engage in self-coups, be on the ballot, is because all other arms of government in Uganda no longer function in a manner to enable genuine and meaningful political elections.

The euphoria of having a genuine Parliament that holds the Executive in check has long died. Large numbers of MPs have consistently participated in desecrating our Constitution that was promulgated in 1995.

Click here to read more about the history of Uganda’s Constitutions.

By the action of our MPs, it, our 1995 Constitution, was never allowed to stand and serve its purpose. A Constitution that was made through a multi-stage process:

• Extensive public consultations
• Drafted by a Constitutional Commission
• Debated and adopted by a Constituent Assembly of elected peoples representatives

Our elected representatives, MPs, came into power by political election. Obviously, most of them, on both sides of the aisle, are unfit to hold such office. They have proven, time and again, that they are not good public servants at all.

My expectations that those who obtain leadership by academic excellence, by being learned, have perhaps been the greatest dashed. One cannot be, but most disillusioned by our Judiciary. Story for another day.

Let me conclude this post. Perhaps, change of guard by bloodless coups that bring in benevolent dictators is the wiser option than to waste money in meaningless and costly political elections for which we already know the results.

And so, I hope what is being said and written about President Ibrahim Traore and massively promoted by the Burkina Faso pro-government propaganda machine is mostly true.

If so, I hope President Traore succeeds for the good of his people.