Besigye, Museveni talks

Even Annan had struggled to defend the Kenya arrangement a year into its existence. “Power-sharing arrangements may not be the universal panacea for disputed elections, but the situation in Kenya was unique,” he said at a review of the progress of the Kenya coalition in 2009 in Geneva, “The options available to resolve the disputed election results – recount, re-tally, re-run – were not viable as it risked more people being killed and there were long-standing issues which triggered the horrific post-election violence.”

There has been talk of Annan getting involved in the Uganda situation. However, Annan did not respond to a request by The Independent for a comment on Uganda. His office, the Kofi Annan Foundation, said he has an overcommitted schedule.

Besigye’s defiance

Since the elections, which Besigye calls the most fraudulent electoral process in Uganda, the opposition leader has severally been arrested. He remains detained at his home in Kasangati, and is heavily surrounded by security forces.

He has continuously called on his supporters to protest if the government continues blocking him and in his latest statement, he said, if the demand for an independent vote recount by independent auditors, is not adhered to “we shall form government as mandated by our people- the Peoples’ Government”.

That plan, Besigye said, would involve withholding cooperation, submission and obedience of the population from Museveni government to make it lose power.

“We shall call for non-violent actions that disempower the regime seeking to impose itself on our country. We may have to make some sacrifices and should be prepared to do so. I am confident that our people’s resolve to have non-violent change of leadership for the first time will become a reality in 2016.”

President Museveni, meanwhile, is seeking to prevent all this by using the security forces to keep Besigye under lock down. In his victory speech at his country home in Rwakitura, he called the opposition liars and demagogues and said he would not allow them to destabilise Uganda.

Where Museveni is relying heavily on the security operatives, Besigye is banking on the support of the masses. Those who are calling for talks fear a showdown between the two, which they say would plunge the country into turmoil if it occurred.

Observers say the language the two are using is synonymous with that they used at the height of other tensions that inspired similar calls for dialogue in the past.

This was five years ago amidst the Besigye-led Walk to Work protests that claimed nine lives and left scores injured. At the time, the proprietor of The Independent magazine, Andrew Mwenda, and former Managing Director of Monitor Publications Ltd, Conrad Nkutu, and others sought to end the chaos by attempting to broker peace talks between Museveni and Besigye. But the bid collapsed because the two leaders failed to agree on preconditions for the talks.

Apparently Museveni wanted Besigye to stop engaging in his political activism and recognise his government as legitimately elected during the 2011 February elections.  The opposition had declined to recognise the results. Besigye rejected this Museveni demand. Those involved say, however, Museveni accepted some of Besigye’s conditions but Besigye refused to budge on any of Museveni’s.

But Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) President Mugisha Muntu while talking to the media on March.1 revealed that the ruling party which had initiated the idea of the talks through an emissary had later failed to follow through on the demands.

Muntu said the party had demanded that if talks are to take place, they should be structured with a clear agenda published for the entire public to know, an independent arbiter, and with a clear time frame.

FDC had also demanded that there is a mechanism of how the talk’s agenda would be implemented. Apparently, Museveni’s side never returned with a response to these demands.

Since 2010, the six parliamentary parties, with support from the Netherlands Institute for Multiparty democracy (NIMD), established an informal Interparty Dialogue Process (IPOD) where both the ruling party and opposition committed to regularly engage with each other in a dialogue process but this platform has not been seriously exploited to address some of these challenges.

There is a view that the biggest hindrance to dialogues is the heavy suspicion Besigye has of Museveni and the contempt Museveni has for the entire opposition.

In the same speech where he called the opposition liars and demagogues, Museveni said he would going forward, work towards politically wiping out the opposition.

Besigye, on the other hand, has made his bones criticising and opposing Museveni for 15 years now. In all those years, the two men have shaken hands only twice. The first time was during the Pope’s visit in 2015 and the second time was during the second Presidential debate just a few days to the election.

While they never talked the first time, the second time got them reacting to each other’s views on subjects like Uganda’s intervention in DRC and government accountability.  The tension between the two men was not lost on any one.

“I cannot accept what Col. Besigye is saying, it is false,” President Museveni said at one point. In a direct swipe at all the opposition candidates, he said, he was not attending the debate to talk about fiction but real Uganda.

Since Besigye, like all the other candidates seized every opportunity to attack Museveni and it became clear that any rapprochement between the two men would not come easily.

Besigye, others say, is cautious about talks with Museveni out of fear of how his supporters who are tired of Museveni would view him. Opposition politicians who have buried a hatchet with Museveni have been referred to as sale-outs.

There is also a believe among some opposition stalwarts that waiting on Museveni to falter and striking at his weakest is more potent than talking to him and lending credibility to his government.

However, members of the public are more open for any avenues to peace.

When The Independent visited one of the toughest opposition strongholds in downtown Kampala—Kisekka Market, the used motor vehicle parts market—where supporters tend to engage police in running battles, there was warming to the idea of talks especially if it can result into a peaceful transition and reverse the excesses of the current government.

“For us we want the government to address our concerns like poverty, corruption among others,” one opposition supporter who only identified himself as Lumala said, “if the two can talk and address these issues, we do not have a problem.”

Even Robert Kisembo, the area chairman, who also runs a motor vehicle spare parts shop, said that what is important is for the talks to be guided by a clear basis.

“If they can agree that this and this is the problem and this is how we agree to resolve it for the better of this country, there is no problem,” he said before adding, “but they must be honest about who really won the election.” As it is, Museveni and Besigye each claim they won the election. Besigye’s supporters are also angry that he is not allowed to move freely even if he indeed lost.