By Leonard Egesa
There is a great deal of mocking and disparaging commentary on social and traditional media channels that has been given to the narrative that the National Unity Platform (NUP) made a big mistake in denying the outgoing Busiro East MP, Medard Lubega Sseggona, a ticket to defend his seat in the coming 2026 General Elections, but I beg to differ.
While I do not support their Party nor the ruling Party, I am still fair enough to give the devil his due.
The mockery stems from a prevalence of entitlement to leadership among the English-speaking elite in Musevenian Uganda. They tend to confuse fluency in the English language with intellect. They tend to look at those who lead wannabe Western lifestyles as more polished and more deserving of leadership positions than those who have been brought up in and espouse the ordinary Ugandan conditions of poverty and rawness [in English/Western mannerisms].
In 2024, when we were rooting for Isaac Ssemakadde to be elected resident of the Uganda Law Society (ULS), we were up against sections of this elite group who called themselves the ‘decorum’ brigade. They disapproved of his non-conformist ways of doing things under his ‘legal rebel’ brand.
They had been socialised into believing that the Bar Association (Law Society) is an exclusive club of ‘polished’ lawyers who don sharp suits and adopt several English mannerisms that they have seen in the movies. What was lost in their eyes was that the ‘elite’ club had turned the Law Society into some custodian of crookery in their profession and an enabler of Judicial Tyranny in a failing and ailing society. Ssemakadde is special in that, beyond the legal rebel tag and branding, no soul in the contest at the time could touch his intellectual and professional accomplishments with the longest stick in this life!
That aside, one of the things I have learned from the interactions with Ssemakadde is that the wannabe European or Western clique amongst our ruling elite can only be triggered into action when their comfort is threatened by what they consider as ‘uncouth’ and raw behaviour through ‘insults’ and ‘noise’.
It is not desirable, but seemingly, the most effective device at the moment. It is for this reason that Francis Zaake Butebi has been a more ‘effective’ MP in the last seven to eight years than the suave Matthias Mpuuga and Medard Sseggona.
Let us not forget that it is the ‘noise’ and nosiness of Zaake that pushed the Parliamentary Commission, under the leadership of Anita Among, to try and lock him out of the commission so as not to spill the beans of the infamous ‘Service Awards’ to the commissioners.
Effective indeed. It is the coming of the ‘Ghetto’ to Parliament by Bobi Wine and his Chief Disciple Francis Zaake that brought chaos to the House when the NRM mob had pocketed Shs 29 million each to remove the age limit from our Constitution.
This chaos of 2017 has been the single most eye-opening event in the 39 years of President Museveni’s rule to date. It unmasked his government for what it is – a military establishment that hides under the cloak of a quasi-democratic experiment characterised by sham presidential elections, a bloated, incompetent and castrated Parliament and state institutions [bar the military] on life support.
The political public image of the NRA that had hitherto been carefully managed since 1981 went up in flames on that infamous Wednesday, September 27, 2017, when the military overran Parliament. It was the day that the tiger removed its claws.
In short, in the current Ugandan context, we need more Zaakes, Walukaggas and Bobi Wines to shift the habitat of struggle from the comfortable debates in a castrated Parliament to a contact sport that will draw international attention and arm-twist the rulers into accepting an inclusive national conversation that will help us reverse the bastardization of our national institutions that are central to any semblance of democratic progress in this society.
The commentators seem to forget that NUP is in the business of contesting to win seats in Parliament and not to reward meritocracy or legal finesse. I have not come across a single commentator who claims to have conducted a poll or survey in Busiro East Constituency with results showing that the incumbent MP is in the lead as we head into the campaigns. In fact, if it were about academic accomplishments, David Rubongoya would be the presidential candidate of the Party instead of Bobi Wine. It is politics STUPID!
There has also been the cliché that NUP ignored the [assumed] high IQ of the incumbent Busiro East legislator, Medard Lubega Sseggona, in favour of musician-cum-politician Mathias Walukagga.
In a 2008 research, Vanderbilt University psychologists Crystal Gibson, Bradley Folley and Sohee Park observed that musicians (with professional training) tend to have a higher IQ than non-musicians. While there exists no clear record of Walukagga attending formal music school, nobody can dispute the fact that he was mentored and schooled by Paul Kafeero and has since gone on to shape his own music career with a discography that is not only politically loaded, but resonates with the contemporary urban low-income Ugandan voter.
Until a proper IQ test is conducted for both gentlemen, this narrative of Sseggona’s high IQ is neither here nor there. It is empty rhetoric.
While some of the commentators have referred to Medard Lubega Ssegona as part of the ‘good’ furniture in Parliament over the last 15 years, they are not doing justice to the aspect of track record examination for the suave lawyer and his worthy competitor who happens to be the outgoing Mayor of Kyengera Town Council. In fact, the best arbiter in this argument is the voter in Busiro East Constituency because s/he has been able to test the service worlds of both men. Let the people DECIDE.
Ugandan politics is at a critical juncture, where the most urgent need is not in legislative finesse, but rescue of the democratic institutions of the state and government from the entrenched Musevenian politics of institutional bastardisation. In that respect, the coming elections are a rallying cry for foot soldiers to fight this noble war. The polished English-speaking chaps will return in normal times.
In the words of Gen. Moses Ali, you cannot expect the NUP to behave normally in abnormal times. Give them a break!
The author is a political analyst
