PRESIDENT MUSEVENI’S SLEW OF LIES

Dear President Y K Museveni,

Greetings, in Jesus’ name, your Excellency. I know you have my back only when it is convenient. I took time off and decided to visit your 1996 manifesto: “Tackling the tasks ahead” to compare notes and join the dots, what you enlist as your priorities in this manifesto is telling, I will share with you some of the things that gave me heartache. Allow me to read to you the word of the scripture, Hebrews 11:1-2(KJV):

“Now faith is the substance of things hoped for. For by it the elders obtained a good report”.

Now, sir, your Excellency; we will quickly take off to Page 9 of your 1996 Presidential manifesto where you say, on your position on leadership, paragraph 2:

“In reality managing an underdeveloped country like Uganda imposes onerous burdens on those whose lot is to provide honest leadership”

If I may ask, what happened to the honest leadership you came singing? And onward, on Page 26 of this same manifesto, you talked about the youth, the much-unemployed youth. Let me remind you in case you have forgotten the empty promises;

“In our struggle for the liberation of our country, the youth have always played a crucial role. This is because they have a great a great stake in a secure and stable future”

Are you aware? We are one of the most marginalized groups today and actually, the most unemployed as well as underemployed. And when we ask, we are told that we are the leaders of tomorrow, really? What happened to us being the leaders of today and the great stake we had in a stable and secure future back in 1996?Was this rhetoric just about the youth then, and, is stale now? Quick forward, on page 47, objective number two is the most defiled today:

“Safeguard and consolidate the country’s democratic and constitutional order”

Talking about this objective is the toughest moment. It spreads bare the hypocrisies that you have successfully avoided by bending the Laws but at once reveals clearly the mistake the people made by believing your flat-out lies. I have grown very conscious of faith and always hoped that you were going to be the liberator, as the stories we were inundated with, of the Amin and Obote treacherous regimes revealed. This faith and Hope has terribly diminished, if I am to be very honest with you, honesty is the bedrock of good relationship; so, I will try as much as I can to maintain it.For some time, I saw you as that ‘liberator’ especially because of the ‘Bush war rhetoric’ that I could even faint imitate you. That, all gone, I feel so terrible and almost can’t believe I fell for your lies.

Your message was full of hope as I earlier said, reading from your manifesto, above. It came to a time when your message became the direct equivalent of no promise at all. Hope is a commodity every voter wants to buy but in the event where it’s all watered down by a slew of lies, it spoils the narrative, and that you have done so well over the years. It has been a win-win experience for me, though, it has taught me to be a ‘fair-weather’ supporter. For instance, because of your ineptitude and dishonesty, I ditched you on the side of the road and I am looking for someone else. I have no remorse about that. If that someone equally disappoints me, I will ditch him as well till I am possibly the one calling the shots. You are proved liar beyond reasonable doubt, your Excellency. To call you an accomplished liar maybe sort of ‘unfair’ but, quite real if you study the truths about you. The promises you have made on your trails over the years, which are forgotten as soon as you are elected to nudge me to this conclusion: you are an opportunist but highly sincere-sounding liar.

You have enthusiastically mounted yourself as a ‘god-send’ liberator, this explains why you bent down the constitution to remove term limits, yet in 1996, reading by your objective 2 you proclaimed you were going to safeguard it.There are lots of lapses and miscalculations you have made, but never own up to, unfortunately, but only point your accusing finger at someone else. You have dug holes for yourself; that you climb out perfectly, though; because you have an ‘agile’ judicial system and institutions like the police that are ready to help whenever you are in some sort of ‘situation’. Above the all, you strike me with a tough question of what really changed about you and in the search for answers, I find Ambition vs. Authenticity. You have been here for 30 years (counting) but there remains an intangible quality that eludes you: INDIFFERENCE. Please take your seat and rest, sir, your Excellency.

All hope is not lost yet, though, like Dr. King, I have a dream. I have a dream that one day this nation with rising up and live out to the true meaning of its creed: “FOR GOD AND MY COUNTRY”. There are people out there who see the moral imperative of the truth by yet again, do not see the moral imperative of shining a light in the dark places. As talked about in the Scripture (see Mathew 7:15).They are ravenous wolves and the hide under the apron of piety and compassion. This is telling; that’s the realest form of hypocritical villainy you can ever find. We got to remain strategically focused on gaining ground-----yes constant on the prize; understanding that change doesn’t happen overnight; understand that there will be false starts and setbacks along the way. But, as Dr.King once said in the day (1956); “We can walk and never get weary because we know there is a great camp meeting in the promised land of Freedom and Justice”. That’s for reals. Progress is possible. Don’t give up on advocacy. Don’t give up on voting. Don’t give up on activism. There are too many needs to be met; too much work to be done. There are some frustrations along the way, some from our very own and the other from those in power but listen up, like Dr.King said; “We must accept finite disappointment but never lose infinite hope”.

I can confidently say this; to speak out, to be a voice for someone who can’t speak, you have to be able to live with vitriol. It’s what it takes to say the truth. Even if your voice shakes, as I have often read, say the truth.Dr.King’s faith was hard-won; it sprung from harsh reality and bitter disappointments. I am very comfortable to live with those that disagree today because just like him, I believe and subscribe to his words; “We are caught in an inescapable work of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny”. And by every last bit of my hewing principle I can profoundly say that it is at this moment when our politics appear polarized and faith in the institutions is greatly diminished that we need to take heed of Dr.King’s teachings than ever before. He calls us to the other person’s shoe; to see through their eyes; to understand their pain. He tells us that we have a duty to fight poverty even if we are well off; to care about children in the decrepit school even if our children are doing fine. If we are too daft not to learn from history, we are abounding to repeat the mistakes of History. Very importantly, just like Dr.King; “We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor, it is demanded by the oppressed”. It’s surely perfect timing; not with the war or guns as seen 30 years ago (do you remember 1986?)  but by casting the vote for the Change.

Like Martin Luther King, Jr; this poet’s verse has always been very meaningful to me:

“Truth forever on the scaffold

Wrong forever on the throne…

And behind the dim stands God

Within the shadows keeping watch above his own”

The memory of Dr.King will continue to inspire me and ennoble our world and those who inhabit. Stand and be counted. My dear Ugandans, Go and cast your vote for the Change you want on election day.PS: “If you don’t vote, you don’t count”-Vernon Ferdinand Dahmer.

Sincerely,

THE CITIZEN, Grace Abaho, Sr.