Someone said that Museveni hunts with the dogs and runs with the rabbits:).
[SIZE=6]Why Museveni is now dining with ‘swine’ offspring[/SIZE]
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President Museveni used to describe their fathers as ‘swine’ and ‘cockroaches’, but now he is reaching out to his predecessors’ sons to secure support in their home regions. PHOTOS | FILE
By JULIUS BARIGABA
Posted Saturday, June 4 2016 at 20:14
Keep your friends close, and your enemies even closer, is a common English saying that Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni seems to have taken literally. His decision to reach out to the offspring of his predecessors is being viewed in Kampala with great interest. What is his strategy? With what intentions are the offspring of former presidents responding to the embrace, if at all?
Museveni was in the habit of taking a swipe at his predecessors, especially former dictator Idi Amin and Milton Obote, whom he described as swine for misrule and crimes committed during their regimes. Also in this mix was the Gen Tito Okello Lutwa-led military junta, which lasted six months from July 1985 to January 1986, when Museveni took power.
When Amin was still alive and living in exile in Saudi Arabia, Museveni famously said he could not touch him, “not even with a long stick,” and that if Obote dared to return from exile in Zambia, he would shoot him on the tarmac at Entebbe airport.
But longevity at the helm of Uganda’s politics, which demands skill not only to stay in the game, but to also win over new support, has forced Museveni to dine with the families and descendants of his enemies of yesterday.
Since 1986, at least five offspring of ex-presidents have found their way into the corridors of power, either as Cabinet ministers, Members of Parliament, operatives in key security outfits or diplomats.
Some like Henry Okello Oryem, can be said to be close to the regime’s inner circle. A legislator, member of the ruling party and son to former president Lutwa, Mr Oryem has been in Museveni’s Cabinet since 2001, most of this time as Minister for International Affairs.
Another offspring of an ex-president in Museveni’s government is Taban Amin, son of Idi Amin. He serves in intelligence circles as deputy director of the External Security Organisation. In February, his son, Taban Amin Jr, won a parliamentary seat in Kibanda county on the ticket of the ruling party, of which Museveni is chairman.
In diplomatic circles is Maurice Kagimu, son of Uganda’s pre-independence chief minister Benedicto Kiwanuka. Before being appointed ambassador, Kagimu served as a minister in Museveni’s government.
Jimmy Akena
But the biggest enigma of ex-president’s children is Jimmy Akena. The son of two-time former president Obote (1967-1971 and 1980-1985), Akena was very close to his father and lived with him in exile in Zambia after he was deposed in a coup.
Tutored by his father in the leftist ideology of the Uganda People’s Congress (UPC), Akena surprised political observers in the run-up to the February 18 elections, when media reports emerged that the UPC man had cut a deal with Museveni to support him. Thus he ditched the opposition fronts of both Kizza Besigye and former premier Amama Mbabazi, and delivered the UPC stronghold of Lango sub-region to Museveni.
READ: Museveni-Akena deal makes a case for Besigye-Mbabazi alliance
Political observers in Kampala say several factors have led Museveni to drop his uncompromising stance against former leaders and their families, top of which is the 2005 switch from the Movement system to multiparty politics, which Museveni was uncomfortable with.
But as leader of his party, Museveni has also learnt hard lessons while hunting for votes in regions that were initially opposed to his rule. With the return of multiparty politics, and his regime still unpopular in the north, he needed the former first sons, who in many respects are also heirs of their fathers’ hegemony and influence in these regions.
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