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Uganda Surprise Political Tactics
The adroit political maneuvering of the NRM disguised
its
weakness in implementing its political agenda. Two of the
more
important political initiatives it took during its first
four
years were the general elections of February 1989 and the
extension of interim rule the following October. In both
cases,
the government designed the initiatives to protect itself.
It
kept tight control by surprising its opponents and then
moving
too fast to permit them to take any political advantages.
Museveni announced the February elections only three weeks
before
they began. The rules ensured that the NRM could not lose
control
over the government, regardless of the outcome. Aspiring
candidates had to make an immediate choice to oppose the
electoral system or to participate in it.
The NRM's October 1989 extension of the interim period
until
1995 broke the most important promise the NRM had made in
taking
power, though the difficulties created by the war and the
economy
had made the four-year deadline impractical. The NRM
rushed
legislation for the five-year extension through the NRC in
one
week, despite demands from some parliamentarians for time
to
consult their constituents. The first person in Uganda
ever to
resign from parliament did so over the government's
failure to
allow public discussion of this issue. The government
undoubtedly
feared that a public campaign against the extension would
serve
as a vehicle for other political issues and so cripple its
legitimacy. As in the case of outwitting the Baganda clan
heads,
the government's clever tactics helped it win the day but
only at
the expense of attending to its own agenda. In addition,
NRM
leaders were sufficiently flexible to bring their
opponents into
office under the umbrella of broad-based government, but
that
also reduced their political options by forcing them to
respond
to their opponents' interests in maintaining their own
ethnic,
religious, and patronage connections.
At the same time, until 1990 the government did not use
surprise tactics to set up a new constitution. It allowed
the
commission appointed for that purpose to take two years to
collect public testimony and write a draft. Indeed,
completing
the constitutional process without a rush was an important
reason
for extending the interim period. NRM leaders knew the
minefield
of Ugandan politics. Giving their opponents more time or
room for
maneuver might have mired each initiative or forced the
government into using coercion and losing any chance to
build
political support. The interconnections of the north-south
question, the Buganda question, and the party question
made the
government's tactical strategy all the more imperative.
The NRM's
use of tactics, so reminiscent of its surprise attacks
during the
guerrilla struggle against the Obote government, allowed
it to
retain the political initiative. But it also indicated
that NRM
leaders had discovered how difficult and how slow it would
be to
make any of the fundamental changes they had called for in
the
Ten-Point Program.
Data as of December 1990
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