By Oweyegha-Afunaduula
On 11 February 2022, The Daily Monitor published my article “Disappearance of Police in Uganda Police: The Dangers” in which the first sentence reads: “In Uganda, the militarisation of politics and the police are parallel processes that have been pursued by President Museveni simultaneously and consciously. However, it is correct to say that almost everything in Uganda has been militarised by President Tibuhaburwa Museveni to enhance his personalist power and rule: the Executive, elections, legislations, justice and society, to name but a few.Therefore, despite President Museveni’s commitment to periodic elections since 1996, politics in Uganda is not civic but military politics. The periodic elections are designed to create the impression that there is democracy in Uganda even if politics is military. The truth is that this is as much a military as a political lie. What we have in Uganda is democratic deception and democratic disguise. We no longer have civilian superiority over the military, let alone civilian superiority over the democratisation process in Uganda. The democratisation process has been distorted by the militarisation of politics.
In my article titled “Military Populists Versus Generational Populists in Democratic Backsliding in Uganda published in Busoga Times of 25 March 2025, I hinted that military politics in Uganda is tinted with the military populism President Tibuhaburwa Museveni, which is currently greatly contradicted by the generational populism of Kyagulanyi Ssentamu aka Bobi wine, and that both are responsible for democratic backsliding in Uganda.
In another article titled “State Terrorism in Uganda Before, During and After Council, Presidential and Parliamentary Elections” published by Ultimate News of 25 March 2025, intimated that military politics in Uganda is intertwined with rising state terrorism, particularly before, during and after council, presidential and parliamentary elections.
In this article “Military Politics, democratic deception and democratic disguise in Uganda, I want to submit that both democratic deception and democratic disguise are integral aspects of military politics. The unity of the three are responsible for creating the politico-military environment in which state terrorism and many other vices are flourishing in Uganda, including overborrowing, diminishing social development and rising commitment of scarce resources to politics, militarism, administration and presidentialism are also flourishing. The “politico-military environment” encompasses the political and military factors that shape security, defense, and international relations, including areas like arms control, defense reforms, and conflict prevention. Central to the politico-military environment of Uganda is the President of Uganda, Tibuhaburwa Museveni, in whom the Uganda Constitution 1995 invests all power and authority, thereby planting the mustard seed for presidentialism in the country.
In my article “The Perils of Presidentialism in Uganda”, I intimated that presidentialism in Uganda involves the president using the power and authority invested in him by the constitution to intrude into and do anything under the Sun, including using the security organs to erode the freedoms, justice, human rights and democracy to enhance his influence in the politico-military environment of Uganda. This is the reason why Law Professor Oloka Onyango (New Vision, 2017) called for the taming of President Tibuhaburwa Museveni’s powers, adding “The Phenomenon of presidentialism must be dealt with and examined”. He decried the overconcentration of power in the hands of the President as the phenomenon of presidentialism and argued that it partly has its roots in the colonial history of the country. However, during the making of the Uganda Constitution 1995 it was the National Resistance Movement/Army that claimed they had liberated Uganda.
Democratic deception and democratic disguise in governance reflect the characters of those at the epitome of governance. If they are prone to lying to or deceiving the public or to disguising their true personalities. They reflect truth evasion, and lack of respect for the public in service greed and selfishness of those in power. Lies and deception in governance can be regarded as incompatible with a more modest account of democracy as a system of public equality among political equals (Bellamy, 2019). Frequently, at least in Uganda, Lies, deception and disinformation are employed to create inequality between President Tibuhaburwa Museveni and alternative leaders in order to preserve his perennial rule and manipulate the politico-military environment for hereditary political succession. This way, democracy is broken by lies, deception and disinformation (Chadwick, 2022).There is no doubt that democratic deception and democratic disguise of the military politics of President Tibuhaburwa Museveni’s national Resistance Movement regime are jointly inhibiting democratic transition from military democracy to civic democracy. It is also responsible for the fact that the national budget of Uganda, heavily dependent on borrowing, with no concern for future generations of Ugandans, is disoriented to build roads in the DRC, and provide electricity in Southern Sudan without seeking the approval of Ugandans.
Eric Kashambuzi (2010) observed that the ruling party (NRM) regime is a military dictatorship, and therefore, however many elections it organises, it remains so. Indeed, the regime government is dominated by military me and women. Even Parliament has 10 military men as Members of Parliament. Before, during and after elections the population is sustained with high levels of fear through the use of guns, Mambas and teargas. Therefore, the country is dominated by democratic deception and democratic disguise. Indeed, democratic deception and democratic disguise are elements of the shrinking democratic space and democratic backsliding in Uganda under President Tibuhaburwa Museveni’s perennial militarised rule. One could say the real roadblock to Uganda’s transition to democratic rule is President Tibuhaburwa Museveni. This then is his legacy: Shrinking the democratic space in Uganda, driven by his lack of political flexibility, contentious politics over reliance on state terrorism to stay in power hiding behind elections. He regards alternative leaders as criminals. Thus, his politico-military stance is not that of building democracy but perennial occupation of the political space, exclusion of alternative leaders from it, conquest, occupation and domination.
For God and My Country
Further Reading
Adam Scharpf (2020). Dangerous Alliances: Populists and the Military. G!GA Focus on Latin America, Number 1 2020 https://www.giga-hamburg.de/en/publications/giga-focus/dangerous-alliances-populists-and-the-military Visited on 26 March 2025 at 12:35 pm EATBellamy, Richard, Lies, Deception and Democracy (December 17, 2019). BIBLIOTECA DELLA LIBERTÀ, Anno LIV, n. 225-226, maggio-dicembre 2019, DOI 10.23827/BDL_2019_3_2, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3505464 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3505464Chadwick, Andrew (2022). Breaking Democracy: Lies, Deception and Disinformation. Gresham College, 5 May 2022Col. Okei Rukogota (2024). Tarehe Sita: Deception by Uganda’s Prophets of Ruin. Sunday Monitor, February 25 2024. https://www.monitor.co.ug/uganda/oped/commentary/tarehe-sita-deception-by-uganda-s-prophets-of-ruin-4536250 Visited on 26 March 2025 at 11:36 am EAT.Daily Monitor (2018). Is Democratic Space Shrinking in Uganda? Article Based on a paper “Shrinking Democratic Space in Uganda? A Crisis of Consensus, Contentious Politics and the War on Terror” delivered by Dr. Moses Khisa at Makerere University on 7th June 2018.Hakkı Taş (2024). Marching to the populist drum? The Military’s Role in Populist Governance. European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR): THE LOOP, 26 March 2024. https://theloop.ecpr.eu/marching-to-the-populist-drum-the-militarys-role-in-populist-governance/ Visited on 26 March 2025 at 12:27 pm EAT. John, M. Schuessler (2015). 1. Explaining Democratic Deception. In Book “Deceipt on the Road to War: Presidents, Politics and American Democracy. Ithaca: New York: Cornell University Press, 2015: p 8-26.Kashambuzi, Eric (2010). Uganda is a military dictatorship disguised as a democracy. Eric Kashambuzi, Eric May 29 2010 https://kashambuzi.com/uganda-is-a-military-dictatorship-disguised-as-democracy/ Visited on 26 March 2025 at 15:03 pm EAT.Linda Njoroge (2025). Oweyegha-Afunaduula – State Terrorism in Uganda Before, During and After Council, Presidential and Parliamentary Elections. Ultimate News, March 25 2025. https://ultimatenews.co.ug/2025/03/oweyegha-afunaduula-state-terrorism-in-uganda-before-during-and-after-council-presidential-and-parliamentary-elections/ Visited on 26 March 2025 at 12:15 pm EAT.New Vision (2017). Tame Museveni’s Powers, says Professor Oloka. New Vision, June 2 2017.Oweyegha-Afunaduula (2022). Disappearance of Police in Uganda Police: The Dangers. Daily Monitor, February 11 2022. https://www.monitor.co.ug/uganda/news/insight/disappearance-of-police-in-uganda-police-the-dangers-3713354 Visited on 26 March 2025 at 11:53 am EAT.Oweyegha-Afunaduula (2022). The Perils of Presidentialism in Uganda. The Daily Monitor, 5 March 2022. https://www.monitor.co.ug/uganda/oped/commentary/perils-of-presidentialism-in-uganda-3737584 Visited on 26 March 2025 at 13:09 pm EAT.Richard Bellamy (2019). Lies, Deception and Democracy. BIBLIOTECA DELLA LIBERTÀ, Anno LIV, n. 225-226, SSRN, December 17 2019 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3505464 Visited on 26 2025 at 14:15 pm EAT
