dr kiiza - Ciizens - IIZ

Transitions: Dear Ugandan leaders: Please talk

20.05.12

Early in the new year, The Observer , a Ugandan bi-weekly paper, broke the news that middlemen have been conducting secret talks to bring Uganda's feuding strongmen, President Yoweri Museveni and Dr Kiiza Besigye, to the negotiating table. According to the article, the talks started in May 2011, at the peak of the "walk to work" protests led by the opposition group Activists for Change (A4C), which called on ordinary Ugandans to walk to work as a protest against rising food and fuel prices. The demonstrations started after the presidential election in February, which Museveni won with 68 percent. Besigye then participated in the protests and was arrested several times as a result. The demonstrations gave new life to Besigye, whose political star had been fading. His brutal treatment at the hands of the government endeared him to the people once again and further tarnished Museveni's diminishing image within the local and international community.

President Museveni has been in power since he led a coup in 1986. At the time, he wanted to right the wrongs done by the previous regimes. Besigye fought alongside him, serving as Museveni's personal doctor during the rebellion days. But Besigye really came to prominence in 1999, when he fell out with the ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM), citing inconsistencies in the party leadership. He then formed his own political party, Reform Agenda, and ran for the presidency in 2001. He then ran again in 2006 and 2011 under a new party, Forum for Democratic Change (FDC). Besigye has been tortured and arrested on numerous occasions by the security services, and his relations with Museveni over the past few years have been sour. Over the past decade he has been the only Ugandan politician to offer a serious challenge to Museveni's government. At the end of 2011 he stepped down from the presidency of the FDC, a move many observers welcomed as a sign of his commitment to democracy within the party.

Source: Foreign Policy (blog)