Sunday, March 6, 2011

Having vanquished Besigye and company, Kenya is Museveni's next stop

By OSCAR OBONYO

A haplessly divided Ugandan opposition has handed victory to incumbent Yoweri Kaguta Museveni and many Ugandans concur, Kaguta is capable of doing it over again come the next elections. 

Even as Kizza Besigye’s besieged gang of fellow presidential losers cry foul over the election Waterloo, we should be wary of the Ugandan strongman’s next possible stop – Kenya. 

Already Kaguta has exploited Kenya’s highly divisive politics. Like a true African polygamist, we have all witnessed how he has got Prime Minister Raila Odinga and Vice President Kalonzo Musyoka playing into his net.

By separately wooing and parading Raila and Kalonzo at his campaign rallies, observers say Kaguta managed to kill two birds with one stone.

He succeeded to exploit the rivalries between PM and VP as well as send a coded message to Ugandans that he was now regional king. Indeed some have viewed Raila and Kalonzo’s political forays in Uganda as an act of "paying homage" to Kaguta.

And there are also others like suspended Agriculture minister William Ruto and Saboti MP Eugene Wamalwa, who are perceived to have been perpetually "summoned" by Kaguta.

Kaguta is a highly divisive element that may well have destroyed the careers of some of Kenya’s political "la crËme de la crËme", in the same fashion he has, Aggrey Awori, the senior most Ugandan politician with Kenyan roots.

When Aggrey, former Vice President Moody Awori’s younger brother, ran an electrifying presidential race against him in 2001, he became a marked man.

For starters, I am a neighbour of Kaguta on the Kenyan side of the Busia border. My border folks understand this fellow very well, right from his days in the bush when he used to slap soles of his tattered shoes on our village paths.

And because we accommodated him as he wedged a decade-long war against Idi Amin and Tito Okello administrations, he has returned severally including up to the home of Aggrey’s brothers to say thank you.

Even as Raila, Kalonzo and other politicians scramble to give Kaguta a "through-pass" to Kenya, we know he is a lethal divisive element. Former VP Awori can attest to this fact, after he started taunting his younger brother, including wedging a rift between the political Aworis.

"You are a nice man but you have a brother here, who is stubborn and reckless," he told Moody in Uganda in 2004, at a public function. After persisted pressure Aggrey played ball and joined Museveni in Government where he was rewarded with a ministerial position.

Akin to the tale of fattening a pig before slaughtering it, this marked the beginning of the end of a fiery Aggrey. He withdrew his attacks against Kaguta and last month a toothless Aggrey was floored by a little known woman, Kevina Taaka.

Kaguta’s future now looks very bright and secured.

And have we forgotten about his tact of singling out a tribe during the post-election violence and Migingo controversy, referring to them as "mad Wajaruo"?

Having fixed Aggrey, Besigye and his gang, Kaguta is surely headed for Kenya.

He has an insatiable political appetite for this country. Sample the following pointers; He crosses over to Kenya in July 2007 to "Uncle Moody’s" Funyula home along the Kenya-Uganda border and awards Awori "Nalubaale medals" for his contribution to the liberation of Uganda from the Idi Amin regime.

And following the botched 2007 presidential polls and bloody aftermath, Kenyans living along the border and Ugandan opposition insist Kaguta’s men are part of the military killing and maiming voters in western Kenya region.

The situation was not helped by the fact that Kaguta took sides in the feuding PNU and ODM camps.

Later in 2008, Ugandan army launches attack and seizes Migingo Island in Lake Victoria, only for the Ugandan Government to shift official position in July 2009.

It stated that while Migingo Island was in fact Kenyan, much of

the waters near it were Uganda’s.

Now Kaguta is deeply immersed in our murky politics. Border residents know better — he is like the proverbial camel that has been invited into our hovel.

Author is Senior Political Writer, The Standard

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