The ongoing exchange between Dr Yusuf Serunkuma and Hon Simon Mulongo in The Observer newspaper is a refreshing breath of fresh air in a public square fouled by insults, demagoguery and ad hominem vitriol.
Here, at the risk of bastardising and even misreporting, is a summary of the argument. Dr Serunkuma makes a moral appeal to President Museveni, now in his fortieth year in charge, to “give Uganda a change” and hand over power peacefully, to avoid the chaos that many worry could erupt if he dies in office.
Hon Mulongo, on the other hand, argues that the emphasis on Museveni’s longevity and biological age is a sideshow in a relatively young post-conflict polity still suffering the birth pangs of state-building. “The real question,” he posits, “is not whether Uganda should transition, but how”.
The two protagonists remind us that it is possible to disagree without being disagreeable, although both alternative views suffer from substantial defects that a post-Museveni Uganda will have to cure and bridge.
Dr Serunkuma’s argument that it is not too late for President Museveni to “do the right thing” has at least two flaws. First, it presupposes that the incumbent knows or believes that Uganda would be better off with him out of office than in it.
There’s little to show this to be the case. In his long political and military career, the number of times Mr Museveni has been a visibly happy and content bit-part player, even as a number two, adds up to the grand figure of zero.
As he traverses the countryside on the campaign trail on roads and through towns that did not exist even 20 years ago, Mr Museveni sees, with merit, evidence of his hard work and justification for his need to carry on. The President’s frame of reference is not what Uganda needs to be in 2066; it is what Uganda was in 1986. Objects in the rearview mirror are closer than they appear to be.
The second flaw is that Dr Serunkuma’s moral argument misjudges human nature. If the world were, by default, a good and happy place where wolves grazed alongside lambs, society would have evolved to create incentives for us to do some bad, not laws to keep us in check.
It is not the default human condition to hand over power willingly. As long as the incentives to stay on outweigh the disincentives, most leaders will cling on. Hope and appealing to a leader’s good heart are not good political strategies.
Hon Mulongo does not dwell on human nature but on material political conditions. Citing examples from Libya, Sudan, Mali and elsewhere, he argues that leadership change as an end in itself can “trigger elite fragmentation and authoritarian relapse when institutional scaffolding is thin”.
This is a correct observation, as is the need he identifies, to control the security sector, clarify national direction, and manage elite competition without state rupture.
Hon Mulongo’s proposal, in lieu of an abrupt presidential exit, is for “a carefully engineered succession” and “institutional maturation” to consolidate democracy. The flaw in this argument should be self-evident: there is no need for carefully engineered successions if institutions are allowed to mature and become firmer than the sum of their parts, founding fathers, and foundational instruments.
In addition, power is a finite resource that enables the rise of strong individuals or institutions, but not both. Strong and long-serving individuals develop expertise, acquire experience and bring equilibrium to complex systems and processes like statecraft and nation-building.
But the opportunity cost of strong leaders is weak institutions that are unable to hold together the state, and the longer individuals reign, the weaker institutions become.
Unfortunately, science has not yet evolved to find a way around the law of biology, which states that all living organisms begin to die the moment they are born. In that sense, both Dr Serunkuma and Hon Mulongo are right to worry about an abrupt presidential exit.
The problem in Libya, Sudan, Zaire, Iraq and elsewhere isn’t that strong and experienced leaders who maintained the equilibrium exited suddenly. It is that these leaders were never going to be sustainable substitutes for strong institutions.
States are forged through violence and the visionary leadership of a few. They are held together by the enlightened and self-interested consensus of the many, through institutions.