This is a rhetorical question, but worth asking and deeply reflecting on. It is election campaign season in Uganda. The market is open for jostling for elective positions.
Way ahead of the 2026 General Election, tensions are already running high, especially in the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM), where some primary contests are do-or-die fights. In many parts of rural Uganda, the ruling party is the party of choice for shrewd and opportunistic elites seeking a path to the national legislature as Members of Parliament. An NRM ticket comes with unmatched advantages during general election campaigns precisely because the ruling party is a state party, granting its candidates the benefits of the state machinery. This means NRM primary contests for certain parliamentary seats are the real elections; the general election is a formality. At the heart of Ugandan politics lies a broader decay and dysfunction that renders elections a rather hopeless and meaningless ritual.
On the one hand, elections hardly represent popular aspirations for democracy and good government, given all the rigging, but also ultimately the calibre of leadership that comes out of electioneering. On the other hand, elections are an extremely costly exercise in both monetary terms and the sheer violence and disruptions they inflict on everyday citizens. On the eve of the 2016 elections, my colleague, Dr Joshua Rubongoya of Roanoke College in the United States, made a provocative call: abolish elections in Uganda! At least for now. It is tough to convince, especially the elite political classes, to see that elections in Uganda’s current context do not serve a higher goal. For many, running for political office is primarily about getting a job and earning big; it is not the often-hackneyed claim of serving the public.
If it were about service to the public, we would be a better-governed country, MPs would not be earning a hefty paycheque, and there would be less scrambling to capture a political seat. For long, the ruling regime and our ruler-in-chief of nearly 40 years, it has to be emphasised, have created perverse incentives where politics is a source of income, not a patriotic pursuit of a common good – a well-governed country. The election season, thus, sits perfectly in the wider frame of politics as supplier of patronage goodies to the masses, however paltry and with little impact to people’s living conditions. Elections are also an avenue for accommodation of elite desires to join the gravy train. Elections are a critical, in fact, a necessary condition, to a democratic form of government, but elections are also a handy tool precisely for subverting democracy and the popular aspirations of the people.
The latter is what has taken steady shape in Uganda in the past decades. It is a simulacra system. On paper, it purports to root for the will of the people and represents the voice of citizens; in practice, it is a façade, a system that sucks the public purse rather than serve the public interest. In fairness, even in fully democratic systems where elections are conducted competently and transparently, and the results are a true reflection of the will of the masses, elections, and indeed democracy as a system, can fall woefully short of meeting the aspirations of the people. Today, around the world, including in so-called advanced/developed countries, with otherwise fully democratic systems of government, there is widespread disillusionment. These are countries where the vote of the citizen is sacred, there is proper representation, respect of the rule of law, and government accountability, at least on paper.
Now, if democracy is flawed or has failed the aspirations of citizens in countries that are governed democratically, the situation can only be worse in a country like Uganda whose ruling regime is fundamentally authoritarian. For all practical purposes, our ruler-in-chief does not need an election to be President. In fact, those who know him closely say he has a deep phobia of political competition, precisely why he cannot allow a level ground where his opponents can compete fairly and lose squarely. What then is the necessity of the ritual of elections, speaking here of presidential elections, that come with a heavy financial cost, complete with untold physical violence, police and military brutality on the citizens?
For the masses, especially the peasantry, but also specific interest groups, there is an illusion of the election campaign season as the time to cash-in, to extract from politicians in ways that only an election can allow. Promise of a road here and a church there, a donation to a savings and credit organisation, paltry cash handouts to the wretched of the earth, and big money to individuals able to position themselves as election kingmakers. However, an honest assessment of all this easily leads to the conclusion that elections are of little value in a perverted system where there is a mockery of democracy rather than the respect for basic rules that undergird the popular will of the people.
moses.khisa@gmail.com
Leave a Reply