• THE FAT BLUNDER BOBI WINE COMMITTED IN NAMING AN OFFICIAL PEOPLE POWER COORDINATION TEAM –LET ALONE STRUCTURING IT AS HE DID
• Besigye’s forces divided between People’s Government and FDC
Talking of political blunders, Bobi Wine’s naming of a People Power Coordination Team (and the outlook he chose to give the team) is a big, fat one. The type of blunder that might insidiously eat away the Kyadondo East MP’s (people?) ‘power’ and render him another colourful-and-loud-but-ineffective opposition stalwart,. How the Ghetto President is to handle the challenges the move has borne for him and his People Power –it’s a huge, huge mountain before the man from Magere and his group, writes Joseph Ssemutooke.
Bobi Wine’s strength has since his emergence been his being non-aligned in respect to the politicians and political organisations he found in place. (You might argue that in the different bi-elections he’s previously sided with Kassiano Wadri, Paul Mwiru, Asuman Basalirwa…but please note that he never established any standing agreement to have a standing political relationship with any of those people, rather he only randomly emerged to support their parliamentary bids). Being non-aligned made Bobi Wine and his People Power group an open door for every politician from every corner of the Opposition (even from the NRM) to come through and be a part of the march, against the feeling/conviction that this was something fresh where the ground was virgin and level and even open for bidding for those who looked to acquire some plots.
Yet now with the naming of that Coordination Team, Bobi Wine has given an opportunity to the politics of ‘I-can’t-support-them-because-they-don’t-appreciate-me’ and ‘I-can’t-support-them-because-I-can’t-break-through-their-ranks’ to strike him and his People Power. The voices of discontent and disillusionment coming from the likes of Dr. Abed Bwanika and Full Figure might for now appear insignificant little murmurs from grudging self-seekers, but the respective history of DP and FDC provides us with a ready illustration that such voices always go a long way to undermine the unity and cohesion of a political movement –even that President Museveni knows how to exploit those voices and the sentiments they brew in the opposition camps where they arise.
Some forces sidelined
The introduction of that coordination team means People Power now no longer presents each and every anti-NRM character the opportunity to come on board and work expecting to eat big when the ‘Ngule/Crown’ is ultimately won. ‘Big wigs’ have emerged in the camp and now they are first priority in case anything is won. Those who aim to become ‘big wigs’ in the camp must wrestle out those who’ve already attained ‘big wig’ status –you can already see why soon we’re going to see in People Power replicas of the ‘Betty Kamya-Alice Alaso’ fights, complete with ‘Betty Kamya’s They’ve-betrayed-me’ public lamentations. Don’t even write-off the possibility of one of the ‘Big Fish’ in the camp trying to wrestle it all away from Bobi Wine, the way Muntu did in respect to Besigye –you” do well to recall that once a ‘formal structure’ is established in any human institution, the fight for its top seat automatically kicks off and it never spares even the founder.
What might have been the right thing for Bobi Wine to do? He must have left People Power an amorphous political movement without any semblance of a structure –so everyone from every walk of life would walk in and finding no existing ‘big wigs’ would feel they have an opportunity to emerge ‘big’. (Fact is, everyone who walks into the political corridors has dreams of becoming big).
How might the movement then have gone about mobilising without a structure in place? The power of People Power/Bobi Wine has never been in mobilising, neither will it be. The power of the movement has from the start been in the celebrity-born popular appeal of its honcho, Bobi Wine. So the smart strategy (note: in my opinion) should have been to leave everything rotating around the personality and charisma of Bobi Wine. In fact that should have allowed Bobi Wine and his People Power to retain the ‘shock’ factor he carried and unleashed to devastating effect during the bi-elections –without organised structures employing his personal magnetism and X Factor to shock seasoned politicking camps that never saw it coming.
I have a feeling the ‘Big Two’ of the traditional political institutions sharpening their weapons for 2021 (NRM and FDC) would still have failed to see Bobi and his People Power coming like a devastating hurricane in 2021. But now Bobi has gone and wrapped himself in the heavy battle armour of structured political organisations, and I can’t see him successfully ‘dealing’ in that heavy armour. Imagine the story of David and Goliath in the Bible taking a different course –David wrapping himself in King Saul’s armour to take on Goliath, when as a little shepherd boy from the wilderness he ought to wear no professional soldier’s battle armour but simply run about in his sandals and animal skins while pulling out his sling to put a stone through Goliath’s head!
I don’t want to go into the fact that the team (judging from the story of how the team was hastily and rather casually assembled) comes with a lot of people whose commitment is questionable, let alone several who should in time be found to be ‘snakes’ spying for the competition. I also don’t want to go into questions of what exactly the team will be doing in the run up to 2021.
But I can’t sign out without saying that (again note; in my opinion) if at all he wanted to establish a coordination team, Bobi should have been smart enough and included every character of considerable weight who until now has shown themselves on the People Power side. Since there actually isn’t much (if any) cost to bear in including people, and since being on the team for now looks more of a thing of prestige than anything else, Bobi should have been smart enough to include the likes of Bwanika and Full Figure in his Coordination team –at this stage, leaving out any ‘weighty people’ who have already bitten the bullet and thrown their weight behind him is some sort of ‘betrayal’ and leaves even those you’re naming with a lot to question about your loyalty/gratitude/sense of fairness and justice.
