Radio Katwe commentary on just ended election

On Saturday, February 25, 2006, the Electoral Commission headed by Badru Kiggundu announced the official results of the 2006 general election.

Incumbent President Yoweri Museevni of the NRM was declared the winner of the presidential race, with 59.28 percent of the vote, while his main challenger Kizza Besigye of the FDC was said to have won 37.36 percent of the vote.

Some of the international observers in Uganda to watch the voting process said it had been free and fair. If Chancellor Angela Merkel had been thrown in prison, spent much of her time in court on trumped up malicious charges, while Schroeder financed his campaign from state coffers, the Germany security agencies beat up, harassed and even killed her supproters , our conflicted Western "patrons" would have still found the process free and fair. Right?

So fine. Lets get on with our lives.

We shall not labour too much to argue the details of how an overall result can be announced on the basis of less than 10 percent of all results publicly announced; we shall not bother too much with the three months leading up to the election when in broad daylight anybody could see the state harassing Besigye in order to burden his chances in the race.

We shall overlook the voices of the many Southern Sudanese who were ferried to army barracks in several parts of Uganda to vote for Museveni and in the excitement of finding themselves taking part in any election in their lives, excitedly began to narrate this new experience to their surprised Ugandan friends and so betrayed Museveni's secret scheme.

We shall behave as if we did not witness the massive rigging in western Uganda in which the state removed its gloves and came all-out to make sure that it fixed an advantage for Museveni.

To organize, then you yourself lose an election is a concept that does not exist in Ugandas' political history. Vote rigging and electoral malpractice were predicted and expected by political commentators of all stripes. We would be a little insincere if we suddenly began to grumble now.

Fast forward to the next plan of action.

When Radio Katwe.com started operations in January, we were not looking for it to be used as a propaganda tool against President Museveni to prevent him from winning the election. That would have been too petty and short-sighted. We recognize clearly that though Museveni the man is a major contributor to them, Ugandas problems are far deeper and more complex than that.

We know Museveni better than most people. His strategies , thinking and methods and therefore have no illusions that he was going to voluntarily relinquish power through a fair election now, in 2011 or any time in the foreseeable future. Infact we are a bit miffed that our forecast before the election had even begun of a 63% "win" for Museveni against 30% for Besigye was a bit off.

We were more concerned with the overall picture of how to break the cycle of unending suffering and self-inflicted backwardness engendered by one-man rule and dictatorship in Uganda. This will conceivably take generations.

The last general election in Uganda's history to be received as free and fair was the 1962 election that prepared the way for independence.

Every major election since then, from 1980 to 1996, 2001, and now 2006, has been highly contentious and contested so loudly that the question of foul play could not easily be dismissed.

On the evening of Friday February 24, 2006, around 7:00 p.m. Ugandan time, Radio Katwe published a news flash saying that the website of the Ugandan newspaper, the Daily Monitor was being blocked and the state had sent a CID officer and the head of the Broadcasting Council to the Monitor headquarters at Namuwongo to quietly put pressure on the company to stop announcing the results of the election at its Tally Centre.

A number of visitors to the Radio Katwe.com website read the story of the Daily Monitor and KFM radio blockade and angrily accused Radio Katwe of publishing hateful propaganda against the Museveni regime and many used the most obscene language imaginable.

Many people started to believe that Radio Katwe was a tool of the FDC against Museveni when they saw this story.

But many others who have noticed the effort under difficult conditions by Radio Katwe to bring the truth to Ugandans, believed us. That Friday, traffic to Radio Katwe.com broke the previous record of 140,000 and ended the day at above 170,000 as people all over the world trying to find the truth of what was happening in Uganda logged on to our website.

On Sunday February 26, many could not believe their eyes when they read a story in the Monitor's Sunday print edition and website confirming more than 24 hours later what Radio Katwe had first broken to the world.

"The government has jammed the signal of 93.3 KFM, a sister media outlet of Daily/Sunday Monitor, for independently relaying results from Thursday's elections," the Sunday Monitor story reported.

"Monitor Publications Ltd (MPL), owners of KFM and publishers of Daily/Sunday Monitor, independently tallied results at their Namuwongo offices and relayed them on KFM and the paper's website.

The results showed a much closer race between President Museveni and key challenger Kizza Besigye of FDC compared to those being released by the Electoral Commission. The government consequently blocked the website (http://www.monitor.co.ug) and jammed the KFM signal" MPL Managing Director Conrad Nkutu said. Internal Affairs Minister Ruhakana Rugunda told him on Friday that the security agencies had indeed jammed KFM and blocked the website but that all would be fine quickly. "He promised yesterday [Saturday] that the blocking and jamming would be reversed but only the website is unblocked" Mr Nkutu said.

That is the official Daily Monitor version of the story first published by Radio Katwe.com

As a result of the Sunday Monitor confirming more than 24 hours later what Radio Katwe had first announced and which many people thought was the "usual lies" of the website, Radio Katwe has taken another step in being recognized by Ugandans as the medium that will play a crucial role in the trying and difficult years ahead. Of course some of the governments nefarious plans are abandoned because they are exposed before hand. So a superficial person will think that Radio Katwe was not accurate at first. But that is a good thing. It is our intention to expose and cause as many plans as possible to fail.

We would like to announce that the traffic to the Radio Katwe website between February 1 to February 21, 2006 totaled 1,014,000 hits.

One million is a lot of visits for a website that has just started and which the Internet search engines cannot even pick up yet. Moreover, it has been blocked by the government in the country with its main audience, Uganda.

At the current average of about 120,000 visitors a day, Radio Katwe.com is not very far behind the number of hits that the New Visions' (198,000) or Daily Monitors' (200,000) daily averages.

Some cynical readers rightly questioned us over how we could have achieved such huge numbers of visitors when the website is blocked in Uganda and anyway Uganda does not even have a high Internet connectivity.

Though our main audience is in Uganda, like any website, we can be accessed by anybody from all over the world. So taking the potential number of visitors worldwide, we are infact still a small voice.

As we have said before, we cannot claim that all the news stories and reports we publish are 100 percent or even 80 percent correct all the time.

Even the New Vsision, Daily Monitor or BBC and New York Times with decades of experience occasionally get a number of stories or details in the stories wrong and issue apologies. Worse, beholden as they are to powerful business and or political interests, compromise and deliberate, outright misinformation are all too common.

Radio Katwe is in a complicated position because it is dealing with top-secret information and revelations that most Ugandans are hearing for the first time in their lives. Many readers of Radio Katwe.com wish to see the truth of Uganda's history come out.

Many of them send in tips on gossip, news, allegations, facts, and events they have heard about. Radio Katwe has to piece them together.

Since the contributors are writing anonymously, it is impossible to call up or email anybody to get confirmation or more details. But it is our solemn responsibility to correct, issue apologies or retract our stories as soon as we get credible information that is contrary to what has been published. If you the reader knows "truth" contrary to what we have here, the more mature thing to do is take the time to send it in, instead of just crying foul.

But judging by the flood of emails, files, tips and contributions we are getting from the public, most Ugandans are quite unhappy about the state of affairs but are too afraid to take an open stand. They have decided to find their voice in Radio Katwe. We are obliged to disguise some of the information in our reports so as to protect whistle blowers in security agencies, but we will always tell Ugandans what they need to hear.

Thankfully, the Museveni regime does not control the Internet and so cannot do much about all its secrets being exposed to the Ugandan public and Diaspora. The best they can do, and which we hope for, is to stop stealing our money, stop harassing, torturing and killing Ugandans.

Other than that, there is a limit to what the state can do in this age of the Internet.This should give hope to patriotic Ugandans who love their country and wish for a democratic era to begin.

Their ever growing insecurity as evidenced by the huge security detail which guards him and his family and their property from physical harm, is only an outward sign of the pressure they feel to keep a tight lid on the top-level and sensitive secrets away from the public eye.

Radio Katwe is not the cause of the severe shortage in the emperors wardrobe, we are only pointing out that he is naked.

From now on, Museveni will address rallies or the nation well knowing that a lot of them now see him a new light. That they know a little bit of him as he really is. We expect extreme efforts to be made to hide signs of his various illnesses, which are of course a concern for all of us.

The days of giving Ugandans a false image of moral uprightness and "revolutionary" vision are now over because people are logging on to Radio Katwe and reading up what takes place behind doors (and between sheets) in Musevenis regime. And he cant stop it. A government cannot be run in total secrecy and for every Radio Katwe that he shuts down, 10 will take its place.

Let us watch and see as Ugandans are treated to their full history, not these exaggerations whereby the "pious" First Family is above reproach in the public eye but the rest of the Ugandan public is open to scrutiny. They can grab you from the street or your home and do as their sick minds wish with impunity.

Turning to the election, we have a number of comments to make.

While we deplore the cheating and naked use of the state machinery to intimidate, even kill voters and rig the results, we cannot say that everything is the fault of the NRM government, party, and Museveni. Whereas the orders come from him, Museveni does not personally go down to the Electoral Commission and fudgue the figures. Thousands of Ugandans cooperate in making his harmful schemes work.

You have to understand Museveni's reactions and why he had to do everything legal and illegal to "win" this election.

That Besigye took Museveni's beloved Winnie Byanyima and Museveni has never recovered from that as some claim is only a minor, insignificant factor. The real deal is that Besigye in 2001 took away the bulk of Museveni's support in the country and did even more damage in 2005 and 2006.

Besigye is the man who conclusively and comprehensively shattered the myth of Museveni as a great man, a democrat, an invincible liberator. Besigye helped us to see Museveni's weaknesses better.

Now Besigye in 2006 threatened to take Museveni's most cherished thing, power, and the results we saw published by Daily Monitor and announced by KFM showed that Besigye won the 2006 election.

Putting morals aside, what was Museveni to do politically except rig, use violence, and make sure that the results were overturned?

What would you do if a man came and took your wife, the market share of your company until you were faced with bankruptcy, and finally he threatened to take your job?

You would be a special human not to resort to Museveni's desperate measures. So in some sick way, Museveni's desperate moves are logical. He is entitled to defend himself, and we wish to emphasize that he succeeds because thousands of Ugandans cooperate and agree to be used by him. The apparent triumph of evil over good is testimony to the weakness of civil society and moral depravity which Uganda as a whole has sunk to.

What of the other candidates?

Let us look at them one by one:

Abed Bwanika

The candidate who performed the best in the election, as far as Radio Katwe is concerned, was the independent Abed Bwanika.

He had no party organization behind him to guard against rigging of his votes and most people heard about him for the first time in 2005 at the time of nominations.

He did well during the candidates' debate at the Sheraton Hotel and there is nothing to criticize him over. He did his best and he did well.

If Uganda was not a mad country, completely corrupted and rotten from the core, the best president for the country would be Abed Bwanika or somebody like Mohammed Kibirige Mayanja of Jeema.

Being the corrupt and unprincipled country that we are, we did not even give much time to the message and the principled character of Bwanika.

Kizza Besigye

Besigye was the hero of the campaign and you could say that he is the new hero of Uganda.

Many people will never forget Besigye for the rest of their lives. He displayed courage and a determination that won many hearts and put him in the ranks of Uganda's greatest heroes.

What more does he need?

Someone could argue that it is good that Besigye was not declared the winner of the election. Had he been announced the winner, he would have immediately made the transition from national hero to practical politician and president.

He would have had to start dealing with the huge mess of 20 years left behind by Museveni.

He would have to meet such high expectations to restore regular electricity, deal with the traffic jams and dirty streets, rescue institutions at or near collapse, he would have had to start showing the Acholi population that the war would end in three months and they would leave the inhuman, concentration camps.

Nobody can tackle such deep problems and not lose popularity and become like President Mwai Kibaki of Kenya who is now on some counts a victim of the high expectations he raised.

So it serves Besigye's place in history to remain the leader of the opposition, addressing journalists at his home, appearing in court after the election as the victim of the repressive Museveni regime, each time gaining, not losing support.

Radio Katwe faults Besigye over some areas. The way he came out and condemned the legacy of the NRM was not convincing enough.

He made it seem as if the NRA/NRM was once a great and noble revolution but because of being in power for too long, it started to lose direction and so it was time for change. We feel this is an inadequate, even misleading assesment.

Radio Katwe is more direct.

The information we are getting from Ugandans on this website and other sources shows us that the NRM was driven by hopeless, evil idealogies like Marxism right from its inception and it has rained hell and death and brought too much Machiavellian cynicism to Ugandan society.

Besigye in his public statements does not seem to see that fundamental evil side to the NRM machine and therefore Radio Katwe says that Ugandans were going to be disappointed after some time. Without a deep appreciation of the bankruptcy and fatal flaws inherent in his former political convictions (in NRM), Besigye was not going to bring fundamental change to Uganda. With a significant NRM opposition presence in government, the best we would have got is an NRM-Lite, NRM without the barefaced theft, lying, torture and general degeneracy.

Besigye was the Minister of State for Internal Affairs in the early years of the NRM government.

The murder of Andrew Kayiira is a wound in Uganda's heart that cannot go away and Besigye is said to have been given the file handling Kayiira's murder by Museveni in 1987.

In the campaigns, Besigye did not touch on this sensitive subject much and you cannot move forward in Uganda's healing if Kayiira's death is not explained to the full. Besigye it seems does not understand how much pain the murder of Kayiira still brings to Ugandans of good will.

Some of the draconian military laws and the culture of UPDF impunity that imprisoned and is now persecuting Besigye were created or approved by Besigye himself as minister of state or National Political Commissar. Just like Generals Tumwine of the GCM and Tinyefuza will one day be victims of the very monster they now preside over.

He avoided that subject during his campaigns. Other FDC heavyweights like Major-General Mugisha Muntu, Anne Mugisha, Major Ruranga Rubaramira, Major John Kazoora and others had once been part of the NRM's heart.

They could not therefore campaign for change of leadership in Uganda and talk only about the corruption and how Museveni had run out of ideas, but not disassociate themselves with the darkest deeds of the NRM regime, and here we were expecting a 100% turn around and fresh start?

Things rarely work that way!

In November 2005, Winnie Byanyima, Besigye's wife, warned that the state might try to kill Besigye by spray poison guns at Luzira prison.

Many people wondered that if Byanyima knew about this plot, how long had it been NRM state practice, and which other people in the past had been murdered by such poison?

Byanyima did not give us details and Besigye did not help clear the air for us over the suspected prison poisoning of former Vice President Paulo Muwanga and poison injection killings of Captain Robert Namiti and others.

Federo? Yes he promised it this time for Buganda as FDC candidate, but we all know that he didnt think much of federo when he was still part of the system.

Winnie Byanyima warned Museveni two weeks before the election that she would spill the beans and reveal his secrets and moral failings if he did not leave Besigye alone. That Museveni, usually arrogant and self confident to the point of being belligerent immediately came to heel and stopped his personal attacks on Besigye should give us reason to pause and ponder the darkness and size of his skeleton closet. Radio Katwe only scratches the surface.

But Byanyima did not really help Uganda. If Museveni has dirty secrets, as Radio Katwe has perhaps ineptly shown, but Byanyima will only reveal them if Museveni continues to harass Besigye her husband, is the fact that over 800,000 of our brothers and sisters in the North continue to be harassed, killed and live like animals for well over a decade because of a callous Museveni government NOT good enough reason for those dark secsrets to be exposed?

Therefore, Radio Katwe states that Besigye represented the Ugandan wish for the end of the Museveni regime, but we need more concrete proof that he has fundamentally turned his back from the NRM kind of manipulation and evil.

John Sebaana Kizito

The next best person to have been president after Bwanika would have been Sebaana Kizito because of the DP belief in parliamentary democracy and the years the party has spent courageously documenting human rights abuses from 1971 to 2006.

This is where we blame Kizito. He conducted a campaign that promised roads, schools, health centres, jobs, and such things. As good as they are, that is not the core pain of Ugandans.

What we need urgently is a fair state where fear, extrajudicial killings, safe houses and the use of the intelligence system to intimidate us end. We can live without electricity for most of the day and night, as we have shown.

But we cannot live in peace without freedom and with so much fear.

DP has a long history and documentation on the NRM and NRA's human rights atrocities and if he had made his campaign theme that, he would have been getting the kind of attention that Radio Katwe.com is getting.

Sebaana Kizito failed to take up the historic mantle of human rights watching and reporting that is the DP legacy, that is why he ended up making almost no impression.

Besides, what kind of party is the DP in this day and age not to embrace mass information and organisation tools like email and the Internet? When even the incompetent NRM party was able to set up a website?

Miria Obote

Mrs. Obote lost the election and Radio Katwe thinks she deserved it. In fact we think she deserved to lose more than all the other candidates (except of course Yoweri Kayibanda Museveni.)

The UPC ruled Uganda two times and it built many of the best institutions, schools, systems and what have you that Uganda has enjoyed since independence. Miria Obote knows Museveni's history and she knows what really happened in Luwero Triangle.

She knows what Museveni did to his first wife Hope. She knows all this. But instead of taking that moral high ground and speaking out from that history, she also went down like Sebaana Kizito to promise good but relatively insignificant things like roads, schools, and so on, when so much evil has been done for 20 years in Uganda and the same evil master did terrible things in Luwero from 1981 to 1985.

Candidate Miria Obote failed to understand that the 2006 presidential race was a moral crusade and not one about bread and butter issues. There are probably fewer Ugandans dying of hunger and disease now, but we still continue to suffer and bleed at heart. Why?

Even with the practical things, most of the people voting in the Ugandan election were born or nursed in hospitals built under the UPC governments of 1962-1971 and 1980-1985.

But Miria Obote was unable to articulate such basic reasons why UPC should be voted to power again.

Yoweri Museveni

The president failed in the 2006 presidential election and the best evidence of his failure of his previous terms as president was to be declared the winner of an election he did not actually win. It shows that for 20 years he has failed to create democracy or independent institutions. But this is not failure in the ordinary sense of trying but not succeeding, but a deliberate well thought out policy.

He showed a deep, long range cunning by taking control of the media before hand with the appointment of Gen. Noble Mayombos to New Vision, Kabushengas Media Council and planting his men in the Electoral Commission to control the flow of information. But He also showed how vulnerable, misguided and cowardly he can be by blocking Radio Katwe.com and the Monitor radio and website.

If after 20 years of total monopoly on power, you can be declared the winner and instead of massive celebrations all over Uganda by the imaginary "60%" who voted for you, people quietly go home, close their doors, enter their beds and sleep, you have good reason to be a worried man. Shame on you! And on all who while knowing these lies, continue to tolerate and sing the false praises. No wonder the Europeans almost instinctively hold us to a "different", lower standard.

Museveni thought he was a clever "revolutionary" guerrilla who could carry out secret killings and the world would never know. They thought their cover as God-fearing people would never be blown - and we do wish they would really turn to God, Allah in private as well as the fake show they put on in public. But now thanks to Radio Katwe.com and its 120,000-a-day audience, the real history of Museveni, his family, and his regime is being read and understood by shocked Ugandans.

Boda boda boys and housegirls are now hearing the truth from their relatives who regularly visit Radio Katwe.com.

To us that is the real meaning of Universal Primary Education! It is not pretty, but at least we are getting universally educated about some of our basic political history.

The winner in this are the people of Uganda.