PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS 2001.

MESSAGE CITIZENS AND UPC MEMBERS WHO ARE REGISTERED VOTERS

BY A. MILTON OBOTE

Fellow citizens,

1. This is a Message from Lusaka, Zambia. I wish to tell you by this means that I am well and that the nightmares of Uganda of the past 15 years are capable of being removed and ended by your votes. Study this Message carefully. You have the cause and the means to bring to an end the dictatorship which has been established in our country. Providence has put you in the same position as that of your fellow citizens who stood against the British might and made the country Independent. You are now in the position to bring about a second Independence by removing the dictatorship with your votes. I look forward to hear that your votes have removed the dictatorship from the face of our country.
2. Once again, a scheme to confirm Museveni in office as the President of Uganda, is being propagated as elections of the President of Uganda.
3. Ever since Museveni signed in January 1986, the Proclamation of the National Resistance Army (NRA) which imposed dictatorship as the system of governance in Uganda, the human rights and the freedoms of the people of Uganda as well as the ballot have been removed from politics, elections and governance.
4. In a country where only supporters of the dictatorship are free to engage in politics as has been the case in Uganda for over 15 years now, every election is inevitably rendered to be, as has been, without political content and competition by different political groups or Parties and therefore becomes clearly a scheme to confirm the continuance of the dictatorship.
5. In the situation where the activities of the political Parties and the human rights and freedoms of the citizen have been suppressed for over 15 years, the Presidential elections of this year is a bogus and spurious scheme to confirm Museveni in the office of the President of Uganda.
6. There are six candidates in the elections and one of whom is the incumbent. Only the incumbent has a political Party known as the Movement which is backing him and whose members have been free during the past 15 years to engage in politics and in the mobilisation of support.
7. I do not in any way disparage any of the other five candidates when I say that they are effectively intruders whose candidatures camouflage what is essentially a one-Party bogus elections and a fourth extension of a dupery to again extend and confirm Museveni and his Party in office.
8. The first term of 4 years which Museveni and his Party proclaimed to end on 25 January 1990 but was extended to 25 January 1995 but no free and fair elections were held in 1995.
9. The 1996 elections was essentially and effectively another and third scheme to extend the continuance of the dictatorship established in 1986.
10. It is open deception and dupery to hold, as Museveni does, that it is possible to hold a free and fair elections when only the Movement, its Branches and supporters are free to actively participate in politics and in elections while the other Parties such as the UPC and DP and their Branches and members are prohibited and debarred from actively participating in politics and elections.
11. No football match, for instance, would be accepted as fair if the rules provided for only one Team to be composed of able bodied and trained players to compete against a Team or Teams composed of disabled players or of onlookers who are motley individuals.
12. To register and show your abhorrence and rejections of Museveni's model of unfair elections, and to release your Parties from the shackles of dictatorship, I urge you, irrespective of the Parties to which you may be members to vote massively against Museveni.
13. Because the dictatorship has allowed UPC and DP members to register as voters but also prohibited and debarred the UPC and the DP from sponsoring candidates or offering a platform to any candidate, the outcome of the elections by those very facts are of acute import to the UPC and DP. The import is of acute interest to the UPC because right from the beginning of the establishment of the dictatorship in 1986, the UPC saw it as an unmitigated evil and consequently the Party has consistently campaigned against the evil and rejected all overtures and temptations to give the evil any scintilla of credence such as being in the Cabinet of the evil or being an intruder in elections to confirm the dictatorship in office.
14. The steadfast campaigns of the UPC and the shunning of the dictatorship by the UPC have now caused a split in the Movement Party and a crisis in the dictatorship which are being evidenced by increasing violence in the elections campaigns.
15. The position of the UPC is the repeal of Article 269 of the Constitution which, if you cast your votes massively against Museveni, shall be achieved.
16. The Uganda Peoples Congress has no candidate in the elections or amongst the six candidates.
17. Although the UPC has no candidate in the elections, that does not prevent UPC members who are registered voters from influencing the outcome of the elections. One definite way of influencing the outcome is for every UPC member who is a registered voter not to vote for the candidate who is abhorred and detested the most by the UPC and that candidate is Museveni. I send two appeals to members of the UPC who are registered voters. First, campaign hard and quietly in your localities against Museveni. Second, do not vote for Museveni.
18. Museveni, who is now extremely desperate because he knows that he is facing defeat will, most likely, regard my appeals as a violation of a provision in the Constitution which prohibits political Parties from campaigning for or against any candidate. My appeals are to the registered voters and not to the political Parties not even to the UPC but to the individual registered voters who may or may not be members of the UPC of which I am a member and voters who are not prohibited from receiving and imparting information so as to be informed voters on the issues in the elections.
19. In any case, it is the Museveni dictatorship which has already in this elections grossly violated the provisions in Article 269 of the Constitution. There are, for instance, candidates who are or claim to be Presidents or leaders of political Parties when the Constitution prohibits every political Party from sponsoring a candidate in the elections. The Presidents or leaders of the political Parties who are candidates in this elections could not have been candidates without the endorsement or sponsorship by their respective Parties and also could not have been accepted as qualified candidates by the Electoral Commission without prior approval of the dictatorship.
20. In the case of the Movement, Museveni's political Party, its Presidential candidate, Museveni himself, was designated by the Supreme Organ of the Movement. That designation was a violation of Article 71 of the Constitution which provides that any supporter of the Movement may and can be a candidate in any elections on personal merit and is not to be designated nor sponsored by any Organ of the Movement. It follows therefore that Museveni's candidature in this election is valid only because of the existence of his dictatorship otherwise his candidature is unconstitutional.
21. In the situation where the political Parties have been prohibited for over 15 years from engaging in politics and from building and managing their structures when the Movement was free to do both, this election is being held against the background of a most virulent and inhuman discrimination on political grounds. Even the Parties whose members or leaders are candidates in this elections, have no grassroot structures comparable to those of the Movement which makes the elections a farce and a foolery to confirm Museveni in office.
22. Discrimination on political grounds is itself prohibited by the Constitution but continues simply because without discrimination and the suppressions of the human rights and freedoms of the citizen, Museveni knows that his Party cannot stand a chance in any free and fair competitive multiparty elections on a level playing field.
23. The oppression of the past over 15 years and the other evils of the Museveni dictatorship are now on test. Those who have the vote, can put an end to the oppression, to the suppressions of the human rights and freedoms of the citizen by voting massively against Museveni.
24. The vote or the ballot which, in the Lwo language is called KWIR, meaning poison is a powerful weapon against discrimination, against corruption and cronyism, against the suppressions of the human rights and freedoms of the citizen, against oppression and against dictatorship and can, if not cast for a candidate, kill the candidate politically.
25. Every one in Uganda who has the vote, now also has the weapon or the poison to kill Museveni politically by not voting for him.
26. The Holy Bible teaches that God created human beings in His own image and endowed every person with inalienable human rights and freedoms which, in the case of the people of Uganda, have been suppressed by Museveni who appears to believe that he is also a god or that he is greater than God. This blasphemy is at the root of the impoverishment of the people of Uganda by the Museveni dictatorship, because Museveni derides and has no respect for human beings created by God and wants them to be poor, disease ridden. sickly and ignorant.
27. In the past 15 years, the Museveni dictatorship has deliberately reduced the Hospitals and Dispensaries built by the UPC government to dilapidated states and with no drugs so that those who fall sick, should not receive medical services and should die. Babies born premature in rural Hospitals have been kept warm by charcoal stoves instead of incubators.
28. In the education sector, the Museveni dictatorship has destroyed quality education which used to exist in Uganda schools and Secondary education has been priced beyond the ability of the parents to pay school fees. Secondary Schools are also in dilapidated states and have no libraries or laboratories. Museveni's scheme to herd 200 or more pupils in a class or under trees, is an insidious scheme to produce a mass of semi-literate youths who will be too easy for Museveni's chosen kin and kith successor to rule.
29. As for the other five candidates, vote for whoever is strong on the repeal of Article 269 of the Constitution and also whoever is strong on the resumption of multiparty politics and multiparty competitive elections. There is, however, a freak in the pack of the five candidates. The freak is the President of the Democratic Party (DP) supposedly elected President by the Delegates Conference of the DP when Article 269 of the Constitution prohibits every political Party from holding its Delegates Conference.
30. Campaign for the candidate who is strong on the repeal of Article 269. Help that candidate to weed out ghost voters in the Register of your area. Also give that candidate names of alert persons in your area to be appointed Polling Agents.
31. Fellow citizens, you now have a weapon and the cause to throw out Museveni, the tormentor of the people of Uganda. Under Museveni there have been unending wars in and outside Uganda use your weapon wisely to put an end to the nightmares which mothers and fathers who lost their sons in the senseless wars have had. Next time it may be your son.

I send you this Message in the spirit of the Motto of our country:

FOR GOD AND MY COUNTRY.

A. Milton Obote

Lusaka,

9 February, 2001.