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Museveni: from bush to polling booth
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INCUMBENT Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni is poised to win the country's presidential elections, though his main rival Kizza Besigye has already rejected the outcome, calling the process “grossly fraudulent.''
Museveni took power as the head of a guerrilla army 15 years ago and took almost three-quarters of the vote when he first went to the polls in 1996.
He ended a nightmare period under dictators Idi Amin and Milton Obote during which hundreds of thousands of Ugandans were tortured and killed.
Museveni is credited with shoring up the troubled heart of the continent by masterminding a series of brilliant military campaigns. The schoolmasterly former guerrilla has also overseen an economic boom in the former British colony following the disastrous rule of the dictators Amin and Obote.
He banned political parties, which he blamed for ethnic and sectarian hatred, and governed instead under a “no party" Movement system, of which every Ugandan is nominally a member.
Museveni argues that Africa has to go its own way and that the West, which has had the luxury of developing democracy over centuries, cannot expect Africans to do the same overnight.
In his compaign, Museveni, full of charm and the natural confidence of a leader, reminded people of what they owe to his government. His campaign promises “No change. Unity, peace, democracy and modernization".
But for many Ugandans, 15 years is simply long enough.
Besigye fought with Museveni in the bush war which brought him to power, and became a senior figure in his government.
But increasingly he found himself unhappy with the president's autocratic style of leadership, his unwillingness to take advice or to tackle high-level corruption.
“Reform now," his campaign promised, “Kizza Besigye — a president who will listen."
It was a shock to many Ugandans — and almost certainly to Museveni — when Besigye announced his candidature, but his campaign steadily gathered momentum, tapping disillusionment among Movement insiders as well as those ignored by the system.
“He (Museveni) should just go before it is too late," said Janet, a teacher in the capital, Kampala. “I like him but I think he needs to go before he spoils everything."
But Museveni is not keen on going just yet and his attacks on Besigye have taken an increasingly personal nature, calling him a traitor and the enemy.
Politics is personal in Africa. Besigye was Museveni's physician when they were rebels together in the bush in the mid-80s. Besigye's wife Winnie Byanyima, a beautiful, brilliant politician in her own right, fell in love with the already married Museveni in the bush war and clearly remains bitter about the very public end of the affair years ago.
Besigye and his wife now depict their former friend as a tired man who, though only 56, is out of touch and out of ideas. Museveni is happy to return the favour. “Besigye is suffering from AIDS," says the president, a charge Besigye refuses to answer. “And Winnie is just a nasty lady."
Now Museveni is poised to pass the biggest political test of his15-year rule in Monday's presidential election, but not without raising serious questions about his style of leadership.
The strength of Besigye's challenge has rattled the government, and shows growing disillusionment with a man who took Uganda out of the dark ages of Amin and Obote.
Opposition claims of violence, intimidation and even rigging — orchestrated they say by Museveni and his allies in the army — have cast a shadow over the polls.(SD-Agencies)
Biography
YOWERI MUSEVENI was born to a peasant pastoralist background in Ankole, western Uganda in 1944 during World War II.
He became politically active as a student at Kampala's Makerere University in the 1960s. He opposed the brutal 1971-79 military dictatorship of Idi Amin, and ran for president in 1980. After losing to Milton Obote, who was president before Amin, in an election that was clearly rigged, Museveni went into the bush in 1981 to start a rebel group known as the National Resistance Movement.
The Movement was largely made up of rural people opposed to Obote's dictatorial regime, which continued the chaos wrought by Amin.
In 1986, Museveni seized power and instituted a “socialist" system. When that failed, he adopted policies recommended by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.
Since 1991, the economy has grown by an average of six per cent a year, and Museveni has maintained relative peace in the face of minor insurgencies launched from Sudan and Congo. The Clinton administration hailed him as “a new breed of African leader".
In 1996, he won the first presidential election held under the 1995 constitution with 73 per cent of the vote. That election has been used as a model for African elections.
He rebuilt the economy, introduced free primary education, championed women's rights and brought AIDS under control, becoming a darling of the West.
He is married to Janet Museveni, has four children and a number of grandchildren.(SD-Agencies)
He ended a nightmare period in Uganda's history, when the country was a by-word for repression and terror.
He has rebuilt the tattered economy, championed women's rights... becoming a golden boy in the West.
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