Opponents of president Musevini are frustrated at election time by the ruling party’s tactic of dividing areas up into new electoral districts
A HODGEPODGE of election posters, the faces of councillors, chairmen and MPs splashed across them, stare down from the walls of Betty Nambooze’s two-storey office in Mukono town, 20km east of Kampala. Printers buzz and faxes sing underneath the chatter of volunteers in the green T-Shirts of the opposition Democratic Party (DP), gearing up for Uganda’s presidential and parliamentary election on February 18th. Only the peculiar sight of three large teddy bears and a rocking-horse tell you that this is in fact a home, doubling as the local election headquarters for the DP and Nambooze, the area’s MP.
Not the entire area though.
"I have 10,000 posters, billboards and banners that say 'Vote Betty. Mukono North',"says Nambooze, a former journalist with the New Visionnewspaper. "But now I'm standing in Mukono Principality because it was decided six months ago to subdivide the constituency. Again."
Since 2001, Mukono has seen itself diced and spliced so many times that it now forms five constituencies, not one. Whereas Nambooze once represented an area that included urban and rural areas, this time she will only represent an urban one, the kind the opposition draws most of its support from.
It means her seat is now pretty safe. But it also means that the ruling NRM (National Resistance Movement), which didn’t win here before, should gain an extra seat in the newly created constituency next door. The rural part of the old Mukono north constituency now forms the backbone of the new Mukono North, an area with just 70,000 or so people. Most constituencies have closer to 200,000. Or at least they once did, before the government began creating new ones.
“This is the extent to which the country is being divided,” says Nambooze. “It’s divide and rule.”
Nambooze’s constituency is in Buganda, a kingdom that predates the creation of Uganda, a country Ireland has committed €166 million to in official development assistance from 2010-2014. Home to a king and twitching with some secessionist tendencies, it has been the source of trouble for Ugandan presidents from Idi Amin and Milton Obote right through to Yoweri Museveni today. Controlling Buganda, say analysts, is the key to exercising power over all of Uganda.
It is for this reason, says the opposition, that the number of constituencies in the region have increased from 14 in 1986, when President Museveni first took power, to more than 80 today. The biggest beneficiary of this exercise, they say, is the president.
Available statistics on the number of legislators since president Museveni took power in 1986 are inconsistent, but, according to ACODE, an advocacy think-tank based in Kampala, they have increased from 76 in 1986 to 332 by the time of the last election in 2006.
“When a new constituency is formed, there is no guarantee that the NRM will win,” argues Adolf Kasaija, the Ugandan minister for local government. However, looking at the voting record, Museveni has gained considerable advantage from their creation. Of the new constituencies created in 1996, Museveni won 89.2 per cent of the vote against a Ugandan average of 74.3 per cent, says ACODE. In 2006, he won 73.6 per cent in the new districts, against a Ugandan average of 59.3 per cent.
Museveni has been increasingly accused of becoming corrupt and autocratic, but with private consumption and public expenditure propelling the economy into growth rates of over 6 per cent, the president argues that his economic stewardship is the best bet for Ugandans in the years ahead. Now heading for his 25th year in office, the former rebel leader has promised citizens that his fourth term as Ugandan president will herald a new era of prosperity for the country – one in which an average Ugandan would be able to earn at least €701 per annum. But many Ugandans, struggling on only half that, wonder whether he is capable of achieving it.
Though the opposition has failed to present a credible alternative to Museveni’s rule, his popularity has steadily declined over the years.
Kasaija says that when a new constituency is drawn up, it is based on population size and geographical features. Political considerations do not come into it. “These new areas are especially needed for service delivery, as they have often been left behind.”
There are no firm facts on whether levels of governance have improved in the new constituencies. However, there are when it comes to new local councils, which have mushroomed since Museveni came to power in 1986. From barely 20 two decades ago, increased levels of decentralisation have seen the number of local districts rise to 111 by the end of 2010.
Again, the government argues that this is to improve “service delivery”. However, the evidence is that the standards of governance in new districts “are as abysmal as they are in many older districts,” says Golooba-Mutebi, a political scientist and senior research fellow at Makerere University in Kampala.
In a 2008 study, Elliot Green, a lecturer in development studies at the London School of Economics, examined whether there were any effects of district creation on immunisation or district-level measurements of the Human Development Index and Human Poverty Index (from the UNDP). He found none.
“I would still argue that the districts are being created to create electoral support for Museveni, which explains why they always seem to be created just before elections,” says Green. “In particular, many new districts have been created in Buganda, which has increasingly grown discontent with Museveni’s rule over the past few years.”
With every new district come new jobs, specifically a chief administrative officer and 224 staff members. In 1991, there were 6,039 jobs in local government. By 2006, when the country was divided into 83 districts, the number of jobs jumped to 12,948, according to a 2010 study.
Most of these jobs go to supporters of the NRM, their children and relatives, says Mutebi. In effect, he argues, the government is buying votes. “The elites who agitate for district creation are often regional or ethnic political entrepreneurs responsible for rallying their kinsmen to support his party and, at election, vote for him. He [Museveni] is keen to keep them on side.”
The elites who agitate for districts are usually those looking for opportunities to become district bureaucrats and elected officials, he says. “The opportunities for graft and self-enrichment in a country with weak institutions are almost limitless.”
