Reflections on Paths Not Taken
The Rajapaksas, like Donald Trump, will portray themselves, again, as the saviours of victimised Sinhala-Buddhists, betrayed by an ‘anti-national’ government which is on the side of the minorities, India and the West. That Rajapaksa gamble may or may not work, electorally.
by Tisaranee Gunasekara
“Sometimes a pebble is allowed to find out what might have happened – if only it had bounced the other way.” ~ Terry Pratchett (Jingo)
( May 15, 2016, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) Former President Mahinda Rajapaksa is unlikely to know the poem or the poet, but the sentiments would have been his as he watched Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni swearing in as president for the seventh time.
‘For all the sad words of tongue or pen,
The saddest are these: ‘It might have been!’’
Mr. Museveni’s seventh consecutive investiture (he has been in power since 1986) was as controversial as the election he purported to win. A clamp down on dissent kept Uganda quiet and silenced the social media, the final frontier of dissent. His main opponent, opposition leader Kizza Besigye, was arrested, flown to a remote corner in the country and formally charged with treason. His crime was casting aspersions on Mr. Museveni’s victory and the charge carries the death sentence.
Kizza Besigye is a member of what is known as the ‘Bush Generation’; a physician by profession, he was Mr. Museveni’s personal doctor during the guerrilla war which propelled the latter to power. Mr Museveni was once a popular leader (and a darling of the West) credited with bringing peace and stability to a war-torn country. He was initially critical of leaders who cling to power forever but changed his tune gradually as his political appetites grew. Mr Besigye was a key member of the Museveni government for more than a decade before joining the opposition.
During his seventh investiture, Mr. Museveni was surrounded by a phalanx of other long-ruled African leaders, leaders who have no intention of leaving power so long as there is a breath left in their aged bodies. Some of them nurse dynastic dreams (Mr. Museveni is accused of promoting his son as his successor); all of them rule over lands where democracy is a cover for one party rule and elections can have only one, utterly predictable, outcome.
Human beings tend to get used to the most atrocious of circumstances, with time. They can be taught to abandon ideals and dreams, and focus on survival and managing. Once the message of ‘support me and you will prosper; oppose me and you will suffer’ has seeped into the collective consciousness of a nation, popular dissent becomes near impossible. People try to get on with their lives to the best of their ability, allowing leaders to rule as they will.
