Sunday, February 26, 2006

Government of Uganda and the Media

So the Daily Monitor in Uganda is now claiming that the government was jamming their radio broadcasts and website (I can concur that the website was “unavailable” during the time claimed, as I could not access it, but had no problem getting to the government-run New Vision). It is now available, though.
Here is the article: Government Jams Radio, Website, from the Daily Monitor

But the government would never, ever dream of shutting down the media in Uganda just because they were reporting something inconvenient, now would they?
Nothing like this here?
Or how about this?
And then there was this from 2002…

Saturday, February 25, 2006

Museveni Wins Ugandan Election

Well, to the surprise and shock of everybody, Museveni will remain in power for a “third” term.
Uganda’s Museveni Wins Election from the BBC

And of course by third term, I mean his 20th year, since if you go by the third term argument, he really was not in power from 1986 until the mid-1990s. But such is life, I suppose. It is really quite unfortunate, however. So here is my take on the whole situation.

This is not good for Uganda. While in a lot of ways Museveni has been pretty good for the country (especially if you are from the southwest, and most certainly if you are NOT for the north), there are other things at stake here. Democracy, no matter how much our elected officials currently would like us to think otherwise, is not the process of having elections. While that is certainly part of it, the other part, and potentially more significant, is the peaceful transfer of power. Without a culture for the peaceful transfer of power, nothing else really matters, as no matter how well things go while some individual is in power, if the end result is massive violence, all the gains will be lost overnight.

So what is going to happen from this? Well, obviously Museveni is going nowhere in the near future. So Uganda is right back where it has always been, a country that is trying to recover from the violent conflicts of the 1970s and 80s. And a country that has never had a peaceful transfer of power. So the opposition at this point has to assume that the only way to actual contest the leadership is through violence, which pretty much means going to the bush and fighting the government. There is also the potential that for the change to take place there will just be a military coup, though the likelihood of predicting that very much eludes me. The final potential is Museveni having a heart attack or something and dying, which would also lead to mass chaos and violence, as there are no structures in place to replace the current government, which is entirely based on him.

So for the future, what happened today could be the beginnings of disaster. Hopefully I am totally wrong, but I don’t think so. It is hard to predict when everything will fall apart, but I am close to absolutely certain that it will, to my own great sadness. Museveni had the chance to go down in African history as a great statesman, but instead chose to keep his grip on power. So he now seems to be well on his path to joining the ranks of other African leaders that the world once thought showed promise and wisdom, Moi from Kenya and Mugabe in Zimbabwe.

And what great company that is to join the ranks of.

Monday, February 20, 2006

Uganda Elections on 23 February 2006

The election in Uganda is to be held in three days, on 23 February. While I have not been doing all that good a job of keeping up with it (there have been other things taking precedence, like making sure I pull this degree), here are some of the recent articles that I have come across.
Tear gas fired at Besigye rally from the BBC
UPDF Trucks Ram Into Besigye Crowd from The Monitor via AllAfrica.com
Besigye protests as his guards are changed from The Monitor

So a quick comment on the election… I can conceive of no way that Besigye will win, or maybe I should say that I can conceive of no way Museveni will allow himself to lose. But we shall see. No matter what, I have a feeling that the next year or so in Uganda will be filled with interesting happenings.

At Long Last, I Return

Hey there everybody. If anybody still comes by these parts… So it seems that I have not posted in more or less forever. So what has happened in the last 3 months? Well, I live through finals and got everything in. Classes ended up well more or less, though I yet again just got killed in my international law class. Ugh. There is a reason I am not in law school. Mainly because I am not very good at it.

So Molly and I went down to Phoenix to see Pat and Jenn, as well as mom and dad. It was very nice to see everybody, and to be someplace nice and warm. Everybody is doing very well and we had a lot of fun.

We then came back to beautiful Boston and started up the final semester. It has been a long first month. I am in the midst of trying to crank out my thesis, and I will be very happy when that goes away. The most difficult part of the whole thing was the realization that I was on the wrong track for about 2 months, and had wasted a lot of time and energy. But there is nothing to be done for it. I went to see Peter Uvin, my advisor, about changing my topic when the frustration got to the final boiling point and I just wanted to smash things. He more or less told me “No.” But we talked about it and I realized where I had gone wrong, and am diligently working away at it. The hope now is that the final product is not something that I cringe when I turn it in. And the sooner it is turned in the better. Having this hanging over me is not making school a whole lot of fun (though I am sure I will look back at this semester and laugh some day).

I spent this last weekend in Washington, DC for job stuff. It went well, all in all. The goal of the trip was to meet people and make some contacts for the future, and that seemed good. Now the real process of finding a job is upon me. At times it seems almost hopeless. But it is a lot like the thesis. The thesis will get written, for better or for worse, and a job will be found, hopefully for the better and hopefully one that will allow me to pay for this fancy education. But we shall see.

I certainly will try and update this thing a little bit more regularly in the future. But one never can tell….

So cheers all. And if any of you know any international non-governmental organizations that are looking for somebody like me, be sure to send them my way.

So here is Pat on Christmas. Is that not a sweet shirt, or what?














Here we all are for the family picture.














And the dancing queen at Fiesta Latina at school.