Some Ugandan politics to start the week

Ugandan paper spotlights Western isolation of country's leader
AFP20050724950013 Kampala The Monitor (Internet Version-WWW) in English 0000 GMT 24 Jul 05
[FBIS Transcribed Excerpt] Ugandan paper spotlights Western isolation of country's leader Excerpt from commentary by Timothy Kalyegira entitled "The growing isolation of President Museveni" published by Ugandan newspaper Daily Monitor website on 24 July

It is a mark of the shallowness of official 1998 policy statements by former US President Bill Clinton, that in a major speech on Africa he singled out four heads of state who he declared to be the "new breed of African leaders." Mr Clinton cited President Isayas Afewerki of Eritrea, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia, [then] Vice-President Paul Kagame of Rwanda, and President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda. Last week on an AIDS campaign trip to Africa, a wiser Clinton avoided Uganda or any of the other three countries where the new breed still rule with iron fists seven years since he made his embarrassingly premature proclamation. The previous week, the first ladies of the world's two diplomatically most powerful countries, Cherie Blair of Great Britain and Laura Bush of the United States of America, visited Africa on a campaign to raise public caution over AIDS. No African head of state and first lady have been more visible in this AIDS campaign since the late 1980s than Museveni and First Lady Janet Museveni. It was therefore conspicuous that none of the visitors from the West saw it fit to visit Uganda, a country that, far and away, has been considered for nearly 20 years as the best yardstick and role model for a successful fight against AIDS that Africa has produced so far (if not the Third World). Even more striking is the fact that Uganda, via Museveni's speech to the global AIDS conference in Bangkok, Thailand, in 2002, became one of the first countries to back US President George W. Bush's approach, which stresses abstinence for single young people. It surely would have been fitting for Ms Bush to visit Uganda to see how successfully this peculiar policy was working out. "Diplomatic slap" To rub salt into the wound, inspite of Museveni's energetic campaign for better terms of trade for Africa and an opening up of Western markets, he was not invited to the most important summit ever between the industrialized world and Africa, the G8-Africa summit at the Gleneagles Hotel, Scotland more than a week ago. Bitter truths, realities explain it away as one might, put on what brave face to it that can be summoned; but the fact remains that this is the greatest and most significant diplomatic slap that Museveni's government has received since 1986 [when it came to power]. Whatever the reasons that the Blair-Bush-Clinton AIDS campaign did not come to Uganda must have been so compelling as to omit [the country] from their schedule. What were they? For a hint at this, on June 2, Jovia Akandwanaho Saleh, Museveni's sister-in-law, was politely but firmly denied a visa to the US by the US embassy in Kampala. Part of the reasons given to the dismayed Ms Akandwanaho was that she was one of several highly-visible Ugandans who the United Nations had listed as plundering the wealth of the Democratic Republic of Congo. This, under new US regulations, automatically disqualified her from entry into the US. Then on Tuesday, 19 July, the Norwegian government announced that it was cutting back its aid to Uganda by 30 per cent because of its displeasure over the political transition. "Isolation has begun in earnest" Is there anything that can be read into this rejection of Uganda that is going to grow more emphatic as time goes by? Indeed there is. The isolation of Uganda has begun in earnest. It is isolation that started with Bob Geldof's call on Museveni to "go away", followed by a 1 May article in the Boston Globe by former US ambassador to Uganda Johnnie Carson severely criticizing the Museveni regime, then by British and Irish government aid cuts, and a scathing World Bank report on corruption. All this was followed by a call in March by Transparency International's Berlin-based president urging Museveni not to seek a third term. [Passage omitted] Therefore, the complete ignoring of Museveni by Laura Bush, Cherie Blair and Clinton was hardly a surprise. By election time in March 2006, Museveni will still be in power, but with all prestige, authority, and goodwill stripped off him by world opinion. The same West that built him into a figure much beyond his competencies is going to revise his entire record until he is reduced to a Mobutu-like caricature; no place in the history books, a bottomless pit that ruled over Uganda for 20 years.