Ugandan politics is a jungle or forest in everyday speak. The undisputed king of the Jungle is none other than Ssabalwanyi Yoweri K. Tibuhaburwa Museveni. He is very consistent in terms of strategy and tactics and very predictable to the keen observer.
After putting one past Rebecca Alitwala Kadaga in the Speakership race, he knows that she is down, but not out. He is going to follow it up with a decisive move that will finish her off politically just like Polofesa Gilbert Bukenya.
Inside the mind of Gen. Tibuhaburwa, the forest is the same, the king of the jungle is constant, but the monkeys keep changing. As long as the forest stays constant, the king can use the same strategy and tactics to manage the affairs of the jungle despite the changing faces of the monkeys.
The fly on the wall inside the CEC meeting that sealed her fate says that a series of allegations were read out about both Kadaga and Oulanyah by Gen. Museveni allegedly prepared for him by the intelligence community. The more damaging allegations were against Kadaga and bordered largely on corruption! Does this ring a bell? This was a veiled message to Kadaga that whereas she may go around throwing tantrums and belittling the ‘party’ and its organs, she must know that they hold her skeletons and could conveniently use them against her to bring her to order.
As sure as night follows day, a series of court cases bordering on corruption and abuse of office are going to spring up against Kadaga in the next three months or so. She will be arrested, detained and humiliated. It will be a rendezvous moment for the Ssabalwanyi and his observers. To some, it will be poetic justice for Kadaga.
There is a common piece of stupid advice that Ugandan political strategists give to people like Kadaga, which is usually centred on mobilising community elders (in this case Basoga) to try and mount pressure on the Ssabalwanyi to forgive and reconsider their own. The Ssabalwanyi never really takes this seriously when he has just ‘won’ an election. He does consider it half-heartedly if it comes close to the elections. This kind of advice is one that Kadaga must flee from.
One of the options available to Kadaga is keeping a low profile and disappearing from the public eye the way JPAM did after losing the 2016 Presidential elections miserably. The problem with this option is that she must ‘effectively’ continue to represent her people of Kamuli District as their Woman MP and if she does not, she might be thrown out of Parliament by her nemesis who is now in charge. If she eats humble pie and attends Parliament as a backbencher, she will face a lot of humiliation that may shorten her journey to our creator. It is a damned-if-you-do and damned-if-you-don’t situation.
The second option is to resign her Parliamentary seat, flee to exile and join the ‘sausage civil service’ at the UN, AU or any of those useless international bodies. If she opts for this, she will be effectively retiring from politics, something that is okay, but does not necessarily shield her from the machinations of her detractors.
The third option, which in my view is the best is for her to resign her seat, seek to obtain in on a NUP ticket and lead the opposition troops in Parliament. This will reinvent and reignite her political career. This would guarantee her influence on the accountability committees of Parliament, which comes in handy when she needs to tame her detractors that may want to use Government institutions to hit her badly.
In politics, when you get a setback, it is usually an opportunity to do the following;
1. Reinvent yourself or political brand
2. Purge your inner circle of sycophants, advisers and strategists and bring in realists and practical strategists.
3. Reach out to former adversaries that now share an enemy with you and forge new alliances.
The ball is now squarely at Kadaga’s feet. We wait. We Watch.
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