Will incumbents let go as East African states prepare for polls?
As Ugandan president prepares to go for another term, will Burundi's
Nkurunziza and South Sudan's Kiir play a similar tune? TEA Graphic
By GAAKI KIGAMBO Special Correspondent
Posted Saturday, February 15 2014 at 19:03
In Summary
As Ugandan president prepares to go for another term, will Burundi's
Nkurunziza and South Sudan's Kiir play a similar tune?
East Africa is entering a stormy political season with two presidents
set to face elections in the next three years — Burundi's President
Pierre Nkurunziza (2015) and Uganda's Yoweri Museveni (2016) — and
Rwanda's President Paul Kagame and Kenya's Uhuru Kenyatta set to
shepherd their countries into elections in 2017.
In neighbouring South Sudan, President Salva Kiir is expected to face
the first General Election since independence scheduled in 2015,
although he recently hinted at possible delays.
Legally, President Nkurunziza is serving his last term, but he is in
the process of delivering a new constitutional framework. The region
will be watching to see if he will hand over power constitutionally.
In Uganda, last week, President Yoweri Museveni's National Resistance
Movement unanimously proposed the leader for another term. This is the
first time, after a lot of dithering and throwing out of hints, that
the Movement has come out unequivocally to say it favours another term
for the long-serving leader.
READ: Museveni: I will not be forced out easily
Kampala dispensed with restrictions to presidential term limits nearly
10 years ago, and it seems Museveni could rule for life.
In recent days, Museveni has moved to crush growing internal
opposition from mainly old hands to his stranglehold on power, both
within his ruling party and the country at large.
Last week, during an annual retreat of his party's lawmakers, a young
legislator drove a resolution that seeks to reserve the position of
the party's flag bearer in the 2016 elections for him.
This is in spite of the fact that such an action runs counter to the
party's constitution that gives the responsibility of determining the
party's presidential candidate to the national delegates conference,
its supreme organ.
The resolution appeared to target Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi, the
ruling party's secretary general, and Speaker of parliament Rebecca
Kadaga — two senior party members around whom rumours of presidential
aspirations have been swirling. Both have stated they would give the
presidency a shot if the party endorsed them.
READ: How NRM legislators plotted Museveni's 2016 bid
The rumours about the two intensified following admissions by major
opposition leaders that Museveni remained impossible to defeat in the
next election in the absence of comprehensive electoral reforms.
Museveni's move appears to be a continuation of his strategy of
reinventing himself around a new generation of Ugandans, who comprise
close to 80 per cent of the country's population and have never known
any other president.
READ: Museveni drops the last of the 'historicals'
What this means politically, is that his restoration of security,
peace and stability — his key campaign issues — are unlikely to wash
with a demographic that constitutes the majority voting block but that
has always known these conditions to exist. Co-option was therefore in
order.
Museveni's started reinventing himself last year first by weeding out
the army of old guards. Then he followed it up with a Cabinet
reshuffle that introduced young ministers like Frank Tumwebaze and
Richard Todwong, who are associated with his 2016 re-election project.
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