There is something handier in the country-wide Muhoozi birthday parties than plates of pilau, all night dances or even personality issues. For the first time, Ugandans have been handed an open invitation to a subject that had become sacrosanct.
In the last decade of President Museveni's rule, any attempt to imagine that Uganda would ever witness a transition would trigger a backlash and depending on which way your imagination took you, you were sure to get a proportional reaction. Imagining a change through an election earned candidates military backlash, treason charges, stuffed ballot boxes, and direct threat to life. Imagining a change by peaceful demonstrations attracted blue, pink and all manner of coloured control fluids gushing out from police vehicles, teargas, incarceration, and torture. If one dared to imagine that the constitutional provisions of term limits and age limits would be a barrier, then the Legislators’ appetite for money stopped that too.
As fate or luck would have it, caught in their own mischief, those who were so intolerant to the possibility of a transition in the land have now officially launched the debate. Years back, an attempt by Hon. Lulume Bayiga to move a private member's bill to prepare for transition enlisted anger, ridicule, and serious caution. When Hon. Okot Ogong appeared to be salivating for the NRM Presidential flag, he was literally blacklisted and the anger against him was pulpable.
Today, as we talk, we may not understand what triggered the open and public show that a transition is in the offing. Never mind that nobody seems to know when. Some say it will be from Museveni to Museveni in 2026. Others say it will from the father to the son in 2026. Others say it is father to son in 2032. Others even say it will be father-in-law to son-in-law...and so on and so forth.
My issue is no longer the facts emanating from the Entebbe house. My interest is what we can observe and what we should do about it. The long and short of it is that a transition is admittedly in the offing; when and to whom, is what I don't know. Now that it is so, my fellow Ugandans, my point is that we should start discussing the transition.
I am so eager to hear what role key stakeholders envisage to play. What will the Uganda People's Defence Forces do and what is expected of them? What legal regime will govern the transition process? Is Parliament thinking about the laws that will guide the nation? Can we, in the Opposition, now think about the Uganda we want without necessarily straying to the positions we want?
Also, there is my Father's house…the Church and the religious groups who have been unusually silent when it is clear that Uganda is at crossroads. The priest and the prophet cannot abscond duty no matter what; their voices must be heard.
I really wish I could hear stakeholders contribute ideas towards a stable transition now that the house of President Museveni has set the ball rolling.
Alaso Alice Asianut
National Coordinator | ANT.