Debunking The Hoax in Kizza Besigye's 'Plan B'

By Amb. Henry Mayega

While making his final speech to FDC members a couple of days ago, Kizza Besigye gave a litany of his political struggles to justify his pulling out of the contest for president in the upcoming general elections. That litany is in the public domain for scrutiny and judgment as to whether it made any sense or a difference from his earlier desperate and empty promises to the electorate anyway.

In his outbursts, he talked of plans A and B and urged his gullible admirers to leave the later to himself. It should be recalled that he has been the net loser to President Yoweri Museveni in all the presidential elections; those contests were in 2001, 2006, 2011 and 2016. In all those elections, he assured the gullible of a “tsunami,” “knocking out the quarter pin,” and in a sense, he would reinvent himself before the subsequent contest; thereby ensuring his extended political lifeline amongst the opposition apparatchiks that has spanned two decades.

That, however, hasn’t had the domino effect on his political career and success that sexagenarian very much expected! Another extraneous thing has particularly disfavored his presidential bid in 2021; the ever intrusive and overarching neo-colonial donors to the recessing opposition have insisted that he relinquishes the space in the stranglehold for upstart Bobi Wine to occupy and they, particularly refused to fund Besigye’s campaign for the 2021 presidential elections! So, to further prosper his political relevance he has had to impress his gullible support base with the imputation of the plan B hoax; which he knows exceedingly well has failed in the days old! Those antiquated antics have partly fatigued sections of the recessing opposition who have withdrawn their meager support from him and validation of his incompetence can be traced in the words of the former prime minister and secretary-general, Amama Mbabazi, who said “Kizza Besigye is a bad loser,” after the 2011 presidential elections. 

But the Ugandan voter still, even after the withdrawal of neo-colonial donor support, poses a fundamental question namely: why has the FDC oligarch opted out of the upcoming contest? The answers to that are as good as anyone can guess: opposition voter fatigue and exhaustion! He has run out of options and the lies that he meticulously employed to maintain a stranglehold on the gullible and, his electoral failures have separately taken a toll on his business empire where he thought a political win would oil it. Relatedly Ugandans should recall that part of the reason he survived for two decades is that he kept nibbling the political support base of independence parties namely the UPC and DP and once it reached near exhaustion, he has had to call it quits since the NRM has been a no-go sector for him.

The debilitating stranglehold he sustained on the rest of the opposition did not spare the FDC which he helped to found either; most recently the very political medicine he administered on the independence parties in order to displace and supplant them also began to affect the FDC! It lost, recently, most of its MPs to the fledgling ANT of Mugisha Muntu and other parties including NRM which validates the dictum “when revolutions begin to eat their own sons.”  After the 2006 general elections, vanquished Kizza Besigye started a wave of violent protests that basically attracted unemployed youth who looted merchandise from markets resulting in loss to venders whose businesses had loan obligations. Those violent groups torched roads, beat up people dressed in yellow a color that is associated with the Yoweri Museveni administration and NRM. After running out of viable and verifiable options, the oligarch is trying to reinvent himself by concocting a “plan B,” which in one singular sense insinuates the use of violence the way his ilk morphed the shadow-way PRA that tried to hide in the DRC jungles but were harvested by the mighty UPDF. Relatedly, the UPDF has warned Besigye over plan B, his non-starter. The name of anyone who entertains the use of force in our current circumstances is a violent criminal, no other and they belong to the gallows.

In all the fissiparous opposition coalitions of 2001, 2006, 2011, and 2016, the oligarch has featured as the common denominator; oftentimes cowing everyone, towering over them, and simultaneously representing their voice through trickery. The stranglehold he maintained over them couldn’t hold anymore and that has led to the emergence of another layer of fifth columnists like Bobi Wine who, the state says has been in “collusion with enemies to infiltrate groups with guns to kill demonstrators and say that the government is the one killing them!” Relatedly it’s not a secret that those fifth columnists are being sponsored by homosexuals just like they did with the coalitions mentioned above.

The author is Deputy Head of Mission - Uganda Embassy, Beijing, China