Unlike His Opponents, President Museveni is a Chess Grandmaster

 

Patrick Odongo Lango

 

 

 

 

President Museveni has been playing and winning in the political game for the last 50 years. He's laser focused on the long game. The President —   a veteran of many wars and many battles — plays chess not checkers. Whereas his opponents in the weak and fractured opposition pander to the media with cheap theatrics, including, wait for it, a campaign of banging pots and saucepans, President Museveni is focused on the issues that's dear to the heart of Ugandans. These issues include reviving a self-sustaining economy, ensuring security of persons and property, industrialization to create jobs and long term prosperity.

President Museveni is a strategic long term player. Even as his opponents create all sorts of hullabaloo on social media, he lays quietly and patiently like a leopard studying its prey. As the opposition tire themselves in the latest newspaper headlines, the president keeps his head pondering on the future of the African race in a dangerous and competitive world.

The president circles the opposition stealthily while sniffing the political air with a keen nose of a seasoned hunter. He throws them red herrings to keep them busy, and finally, when they're tired from playing the president's orchestrated games, he defeats them decisively.

Whereas the opposition expends precious political energy in vitriol, anger, and animosity, President Museveni cultivates and builds bridges with his erstwhile opponents before winning them over. Instead of retribution, he will always enlarge his tent to accommodate his converts from the Opposition. He knows that Uganda is large enough to accommodate us all. So, instead of the opposition mantra of "us vs them", he has cultivated a philosophy of accommodation. No wonder the NRM selected the symbol of a bus as its moniker. No matter how low or high in the station of life, no matter your shade of political opinion, the NRM has space for you as long as you're a citizen of this country.

Some opposition agitators have a mistaken view that NRM is about Museveni only. How mistaken they're! This movement that President Museveni and the other great forefathers started will be carried on for the next 100 years and beyond. There was a reason it's called a movement!

Whereas the Opposition is riven with division and infighting, the National Resistance Movement is a united inexorable well-oiled machine with a huge momentum.

A study of the collective opposition is a study of cat-fights and selfishness. UPC, the Grand Old Party, of Milton Obote, is a divided house with two vicious factions fighting a war of annihilation. The Democratic Party, Uganda's oldest political party, very wisely, with the guidance of the Oracle of Gulu, Norbert Mao entered into a Cooperation agreement with the NRM. Mao is now ensconced on Impala Avenue as Minister of Justice and Constitutional Affairs, a fat and juicy position that has attracted the envy of other short-sighted opposition members on the bespectacled and ever smiling Chairman Mao.

The FDC is still suffering from the aftershocks of the big schism with its former President, Gen Mugisha Muntu. The highly respected General, not a political animal at all, formed the ill-named ANT — The Alliance for National Transformation. The ANT suffered an election debacle of World Cup proportions!

The noisy, small, and inconsequential "People Power" movement, formed by Robert Kyagilanyi popularly known by his music stage name Bobi Wine, was rebranded as NUP and made a splash in Buganda. With social media anger as their only guiding philosophy, there is nothing to write home about this outfit. The less ink spent on them, the better.

And in all these, the calmest man in the room, and with a poker face, remains President Museveni. He has his cards close to his chest. Where others shout, he maintains quiet in his tent.

Now, with the Muhoozi Project picking steam, I am sure the four star general has two jokers and the ace of spades on his hands.

Never twist the tail of an old leopard. It's bound to bite your hands.

 

The writer, who hails from Minakulu in Oyam District, is an NRM Party cadre