Democracy in Uganda is not set up for fair participation, or even for equality, argues Dickson Ogolla. He says political statistics are not the only confusing things in Uganda; it is a place where most numbers don’t always make sense to everyone.

Ugandans went to the polls three weeks ago, the country’s first multiparty election since President Yoweri Museveni came to power at the head of a guerrilla army in January 1986. They were, however, the country’s third general elections, the previous two having been held under a “no party” system, in which political parties were severely restricted, and not allowed to field candidates or run on a partisan platform.

In the end, Museveni won with 59 per cent of the vote. His main challenger, Dr Kizza Besigye, got 37 per cent, while Ssebaana Kizito managed 1.5 percent. Independent candidate Abed Bwanika got 0.9 per cent and Miria Obote, former President Milton Obote’s widow, who became the country’s first female presidential candidate, scraped 0.8 per cent.

For an external observer interested in more than just who the winner would be, the bigger story about the latest election in Uganda is elsewhere. First, for a country that has a population growth rate of 3.4 per cent per year, the least one would expect is a similar growth in the population of those who want to participate in electing her government. Instead, the Uganda voter register has shrunk by 350,000 voters since the 2001 general election, to 10.4 million.

The shrinking can be explained, but not the lack of growth. In 2001 there were allegations of ghost voters. Indeed, the electoral register was cleaned, so the number of voters on the roll came down. So while this gives us an explanation of the shrinkage of the register, it does not shed any light on why it has remained stagnant. Statistically, the voter roll should have grown by at least 17 per cent, meaning there should have been 12.5 million registered voters. The point is that even before the February 23 election, 2 million people had been disenfranchised, and the burden of representation multiplied. The turn-out of 7 million, or 68.6 per cent, of the registered voters further implies that another 3 million people did not participate.

The problem, however, seems to run much deeper. Democracy in Uganda is not set up for fair participation, or even for equality; it’s heavily weighted. One in every five voters comes from four districts - Kampala, Wakiso, Masaka and Mukono, all in the central region. But the average vote per polling station in these four districts is way below the national average, thus a measure of central tendency does not even begin to describe the lack of even spread of the vote. The skew is obvious and worrying. Ideally, each polling station should reflect the national average.

The total votes of all the four districts is much higher than all the votes from the northern region. With this kind of situation, who needs the north? It is instructive that that’s where Besigye beat Museveni with a wide margin.

An even more interesting statistic is that the number of registered voters in Uganda is not much different from that of Kenya, yet Kenya has on the minimum 6 million more people than Uganda - Kenya’s population is about 33 million compared to Uganda’s 27 million (UN, 2005). The age distribution is the same in both countries, with 55 per cent falling below 18 years, the voting age.

Is it that that there are underage or ghost voters in Uganda’s register? Is it that Kenyans are less interested in registering to vote, and Ugandans are far more zealous? Such is the internal contradiction of Uganda’s statistical politics, and it partly explains why the Electoral Commission could, when it was announcing results, confidently state at one point that with 80 per cent of the constituencies counted only 55 per cent of the votes were in, and Museveni had 63 per cent of these votes. At that point, an independent tally centre at The Monitor, which was subsequently banned, was showing a close race: 52 per cent for Museveni and 45 per cent for Besigye.

All this begs the question of whether the elections were rigged. It depends on who you ask. All the independent media were in agreement that they would be rigged even if the only evidence they adduced was that of alleged previous rigging in 2001.

In the end, the Daily Monitor independent tally centre had Museveni winning with a smaller margin - 51.6 per cent, versus Besigye’s 45.6 per cent. These were interim and inconclusive results since the government security forces closed down the centre and intimidated everybody else into not announcing anything other than the results being given by the Electoral Commission. Of course there was the usual vote buying, voter intimidation and outright vote theft in some polling stations. All these under the glare of international press and election observers.

It is amazing how a strong force of 40,000 election monitors - one for every 25 voters, and two per presiding officer - could not do much, with the sole exception of DemGroup, a consortium of local Ugandan NGOs. Otherwise, the Commonwealth and European Union were quick to make their call. Their verdict? The elections were generally peaceful.

Political statistics are not the only confusing things in Uganda. It is a place where most numbers don’t always make sense to everyone. One of Museveni’s “success” stories is his government’s success in reversing the march of HIV/Aids. The Aids infection rates are allegedly down from nearly 30 per cent (in the early nineties) to 6 per cent. However, the only scientific measure of safe sex - fertility rates - has gone up from 4.7 to 6.1 per cent. This means people are having more unprotected sex yet infection rates are coming down! Either the numbers are lying or there is a secret somewhere.

The other statistical puzzle is the economy. With GDP growth rates averaging 6 per cent per year for the past 20 years, Uganda is nowhere near achieving any meaningful development. This is little wonder, because a closer look reveals a big economic lie. In the past 20 years, the economy has failed to generate any real production either in agriculture or in manufacturing. Investment in infrastructure has not been sustained and the road network has almost collapsed. Now the country is plagued by load shedding (power rationing). Power generation at Jinja is down from 350mw to 140mw, a 60 per cent reduction. Because industrial demand wasn’t at significantly high levels, the country never felt the need to diversify from over-reliance on hydropower as its single source for energy. With Lake Victoria water levels plunging dramatically, it now faces a crisis for which it doesn’t have a quick solution.

Until about four years ago, Uganda was billed as one of Africa’s “economic success” stories by Western donors. A closer look reveals a more mixed picture. The economy is composed of 31.1 per cent agriculture, 22.2 per cent industry and 46.9 per cent services. Agriculture also employs 82 per cent of the country’s labour. What the numbers don’t tell you is that agriculture is largely subsistence and for food security.

Industry is mostly food processing (sugar and brewing), and a large proportion of those in what is described as “service” are either selling beer or riding boda boda (moped taxis). Those involved in real production are few and the service sector is merely a vehicle of transfer earnings. The large size of the service sector also means that income inequities are extremely high.

Today, just over 38 per cent of Ugandans live below the poverty line, up from 35 per cent in the ‘90s. The lowest 10 per cent of the population have only 4 per cent share of the household income, and the highest 10 per cent have almost a quarter of the household income share. No official figures are available on unemployment; just as well. Urban unemployment is estimated at over 60 per cent while underemployment or disguised unemployment stalks the rural folk.

So don’t swoon by high-sounding statistics. The GDP growth rate (9 per cent), the inflation rate (9.7 per cent) and so forth. You are better of remembering that the public debt stands at two thirds of the GDP!

The one success story most people seem to agree on is Universal Primary Education (UPE). This has worked, increasing the number of children enrolled in schools by millions. Those enrolled by end of 2004 stood at 7.3 million, up from 6.8 million in 2001. The number of primary school teachers has also increased to 10,876 from 9,187 in the same period. What does this mean for the quality of primary education? The pupil-teacher ratio is down to 50 from 54, the pupil-classroom ratio is also down to 79 from 90, but has quality improved? The gross and net primary school intake ratios (initial enrolment vs retention) have plummeted (down 24 per cent and 21 per cent respectively). Perhaps household poverty is causing huge drop-out rates, thus making the teacher and classroom ratios look good.

The UPE success, however, has created a new headache. What happens post UPE? Only 9.5 per cent of those who enroll for primary education get to secondary education. Post-primary education has become naturally too expensive, what with very high demand and no expansion on physical facilities. The result is a very expansive and privatised post-primary education.

In the meantime, with that problem unresolved, the National Resistance Movement (NRM) is proposing Universal Secondary Education from 2008. Besigye’s Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) and others have no proposal. In terms of broad education reform, there is no policy debate in Uganda although everyone acknowledges the difficulties.

So with shrinking democracy and an economy that flatters to deceive, what choices did Ugandans have in the just-concluded elections? Statistically, five: NRM’s President Yoweri Museneveni, FDC’s Dr Kizza Besigye, Democratic Party’s Mr Sebaana Kizito, Uganda People’s Congress’ Mrs Miria Obote and an independent, Mr Abed Bwanika. However, the contest was for all intents and purposes down to two candidates - the present NRM leader Museveni, and a former NRM ideologue and minister Besigye.

The once strong historical parties DP and UPC had no chance, precisely because of their controversial history, and because parties were largely banned in Uganda from 1986, until last year. The important thing is that there was no debate on these major issues. The campaign got stuck on nasty personal attacks.

There being no philosophical or ideological differences presented to voters, the people were forced to choose between change and continuity. While they were sure that Museveni stood for what he stated - continuity, it was not very clear whether Besigye could deliver what he was promising - change. It became easier to trust in continuity than to hope for change. The live broadcast presidential debates (ignored by both of the front runners) exposed the contest as that of reformers in a situation where radical change was required. Perhaps that is why Museveni won; Ugandans are biding their time instead of gambling.

If there were any lessons, perhaps the biggest was that a political party must never confuse its objectives. One should not romance with democracy when in pursuit for power, even within the law. This was the difference between the Movement and FDC (with a coterie of democracy activists) — Museveni saw democracy as a means, everybody else thought it was an end.

* Dickson Ogolla is Nation Media Group’s research manager. He witnessed the election. Email: [email][email protected] This article first appeared in Africa Insight, an initiative of the Nation Media Group’s Africa Media Network

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