Maravi

(HERALD) Does President have repressive side?

Does President have repressive side?
By Sam Akaki in KAMPALA, Uganda

MUGABE: A blood thirsty tyrant? Uganda’s Opposition which is treated as terrorist by President Yoweri Museveni and ignored or viewed with disdain by the New Labour British government, must be envying the Zimbabwean Opposition, which will face down and could throw out Robert Mugabe in a second round of the presidential poll, scheduled for June 27.

Yet, following the tone orchestrated by the British, the European Union have made it their primary Africa policy to demonise President Mugabe as a corrupt, fascist and blood-thirsty tyrant whose only purpose in life has been to cling to power by rigging elections after elections while brutalising and starving his people to death, thanks to his firm grip on state institutions.

Really?

On April 20, the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission Chairman George Chiweshe belatedly announced that President Mugabe’s ruling Zanu-PF party had lost control of parliament, winning 97 seats, compared with 99 for MDC-T and 10 for the MDC plus one for independent candidate (109 for the combined opposition MDC).

And on May 2, ZEC announced that MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai had won 47,9 percent of the vote share against President Robert Mugabe who got 43,2 percent.

The defeat by Zimbabwe opposition of the ruling Zanu-PF in both parliamentary and presidential elections raises many questions about President Mugabe’s (demonic) caricature, created by the New Labour British government.

How did the opposition manage to win more votes than the ruling Zanu-PF if President Mugabe is such a corrupt, fascist and blood-thirsty tyrant whose only purpose in life has been to cling to power by rigging elections, thanks to his firm grip on state institutions?

Is it possible that, somehow, President Mugabe deliberately (authorised) his own-appointed Zimbabwe Electoral Commission and other organs of state to (allow) the opposition MDC-T to win more votes?

Will President Museveni emulate President Robert Mugabe, come 2011, and (authorise) the Electoral Commission, the Uganda People’s Defence Forces, Maj. Gen. Kale Kayihura’s police force, Maj. Kakooza Mutale’s Kalangala Action Plan and the armed Resident District Commissioners to (allow) the opposition to win more parliamentary and presidential votes than the ruling National Resistance Movement Organisation?

Will President Museveni also allow the Supreme Court to nullify his re-election as President for the fourth term because, as they are likely to rule as they did in 2006 (if anyone bothers to petition the court again) that "the elections have been conducted in non-conformity with the Constitution, the Presidential Elections act and the Electoral Commission Act?"

Meanwhile, President Mugabe has already (allowed) the Zimbabwean High Court to find Morgan Tsvangirai innocent of the 2002 treason charge, despite a damning video tape evidence, which allegedly showed Tsvangirai suggesting that President Mugabe should be "eliminated".

Recall that the same President Mugabe had (allowed) the fascist former white minority leader Ian Smith (who jailed him for 11 years and denied him the opportunity to attend the burial of his only son then) not only to live as a free man, but also to keep thousands of acres of his ill-gotten farmland after the end of the white minority rule in 1980.

Yet, in Ian Smith’s obituary, which appeared in the UK Guardian on November 23, 2007, Mr Knox Chitiyo said "Smith expressed not a word of remorse or regret for his actions in the indiscriminate slaughter of men, women and children by Rhodesian forces in the refugee camps in Mozambique, Zambia and Botswana from 1975 to 1979, which was tantamount to genocide and crimes against humanity."

Why didn’t President Museveni also emulate President Mugabe and allow former president Dr Apollo Milton Obote to return and die in his motherland instead of threatening to have him shot on sight if he came back alive?

And why can’t President Museveni emulate President Mugabe and (allow) the Judiciary to conduct a free, transparent and expeditious due process in Dr Kizza Besigye’s treason trial, which has gone on for three years?

Considering the history of (alleged) rigged elections in Uganda, our invasion, occupation and pillaging of the DR Congo, Dr Besigye’s endless treason trial etc, who is a corrupt, fascist and blood-thirsty tyrant whose only purpose in life has been to cling to power by rigging elections after elections, thanks to his firm control of state institutions?

Doesn’t the winning by the Zimbabwean opposition of more votes in both parliamentary and presidential elections mean that either the elections were free and fair, or President Mugabe must have deliberately (allowed) the opposition to win more votes?

How else could the they have won more votes in a country ruled by a supposed blood-thirsty tyrant?

How?

l Sam Akaki is executive director of Democratic Institutions for Poverty Reduction in Africa (DIPRA).

Labels: COLOUR REVOLUTIONS, HYPOCRISY, NEOCOLONIALISM, UGANDA

posted by MrK @ 7:00 PM