War-ravaged north rues Museveni win

President Yoweri Museveni's victory in last week's poll means Uganda is likely to continue on the path of political stability and economic growth, but many in the north say the election has sharpened the divide between the war-ravaged region and the rest of the country. Museveni, a former guerrilla leader who has ruled the country for two decades, won another five-year term in the country's first multiparty presidential and parliamentary elections in 26 years. "On Sunday, I was doing ministry work in internally displaced people's [IDP) camps, but one catechist who addressed the congregation reminded the people that the Israelites spent 40 years in exile," said Fr Carlos Rodriguez, from the northern town of Gulu. "He told them - stay calm, peaceful and accept the results of the elections. We have been in exile for 20 years, let us accept to remain in exile for another five years. "The task for the government is to prove these people wrong, by fulfilling the many promises Museveni has made," the cleric added. Museveni scored 59 percent of the votes cast, but performed dismally in the north, and parts of the northwest and east where his main challenger, Kiiza Besigye, scored highest. Besigye, leader of the opposition Forum for Democratic Change (FDC) party, has rejected the overall election results, which gave him 37 percent of the votes cast. He has hired 10 lawyers to challenge the outcome in court. James Otto, head of the Gulu-based Human Rights Focus, said: "We shall continue to have two countries in one - the north and the south. This is true politically and economically. "The returns from elections show clearly that the stretch from Mbale [town in the east] to Arua [town in northwest] has cast a protest vote. This is because these areas are the least developed and this has been done in 1996, 2001 and in the recent elections. A Museveni victory perpetuates IDP camps." An estimated 1.7 million people in the region live in camps thanks to a brutal insurgency against the government by the rebel Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). Leander Komakech, who contested the parliamentary seat for Gulu Municipality constituency, said: "This victory for Museveni is another set back. What we needed is peace, but Museveni has not delivered on this and it is doubtful that he will deliver this time round." The insurgency, whose epicentre is the Acholi districts of Gulu, Kitgum and Pader, has over the years spread across the entire northern region and parts of the east. While most of those displaced are in the Acholi region, there are also thousands of IDPs in the Teso districts of Soroti, Katakwi and Amuria and in the Lango districts of Lira and Apac. Rachael Abalo, a social worker in Gulu said: "It our hope that in Museveni's new term he will give the necessary attention to the problems here. Government asked people to go to camps, but failed to provide for them. People want to go home, not the so-called decongestion programme that is shuffling people from one camp to another. [The election] was an opportunity to change what went wrong," she added. Museveni, in an address to the nation on Sunday, said the LRA is being defeated after the Ugandan army denied the rebels operational areas in both northern Uganda and southern Sudan. "We are solving that. We have solved it in northern Uganda and Sudan with the exception of the DRC [Democratic Republic of Congo] in Garamba National Park where we cannot go, where we shall need some help," the president said. "I have worked out a plan how the people in the camps [IDPs] will go home." He said the focus for his government this time would be on the rapid expansion of infrastructure, improvement on subsistence agriculture by introducing commercial farming, building up the local industry and pursuing the East African political federation, which he said would "be the greatest achievement of black Africa". During the campaigns, he said resettlement of IDPs would start with the northeastern Teso region, the northern Lango sub-regions and later spread to the worst hit Acholi region once the government had "wiped out" the LRA. "I want to get rid of these lum [grass] huts from Acholi. They have been there for long. I want the Acholi people to begin living in decent houses made of mabati [iron sheets] like people in other parts of the country," he said, adding that the money would be used to equip the displaced with at least 30 iron sheets per household. Some in the eastern region remained unconvinced. "The results are because of the insurgency that spread into the areas of Teso in 2002 and displaced a number of people who started living in camps. Many people were expressing a desire for a change hoping that their situation will change," Patrick Ochieng, a businessman in Soroti, told IRIN. A foreign diplomat said: "I think that Museveni's victory will make issues of reconciliation in northern Uganda difficult. Museveni has not been much interested in reconciliation and if he will this time reach out, that remains to be seen. I see more of the same and I don't see the government policy on the northern conflict changing," he added. Focus on north? Uganda information minister Nsaba Buturo said the government was aware of the perceptions in the north of the country and that efforts will be made to change it. "We have been doing our best," he told IRIN on Tuesday. "We have had programmes in the north like on infrastructure, but because of this mind-set, it has remained. We are going to work really hard to change this perception because the long-term security of Uganda depends on this. "The local support for [LRA leader] Joseph Kony has diminished and the rebel force has been reduced to a handful of them hiding from one place to the other." David Mukholi, editor of the Sunday Vision newspaper in the capital, Kampala, argued that Museveni will have to give priority to the northern situation to win over support for his party. "This is a new political dispensation – a multiparty system of government. The ruling party will try to win over people in those regions to increase its support base," he told IRIN. "There is a divide between the north and the south, because people in the north have lived in camps for 20 years," Mukholi added. "They have consistently voted against Museveni. This time, they even voted out Movement [the ruling party] MPs. It would be suicidal for Museveni's party to ignore the north." According to Mukholi, the new government is likely to try to end the war quickly, dismantle IDP camps and start programmes to rebuild the region. Elections wanting Perceptions in the north about Museveni's victory will be re-enforced by apparent flaws in the electoral process, which analysts said did not quite measure up to a full democratic multiparty poll. "In essence, these are multi-party elections in a one-party state," Jemera Rone, East Africa coordinator for the New York-based Human Rights Watch said before the polls. "The conditions for a free and fair election have not been met." Rone's group, and others, noted numerous reported incidents of harassment and intimidation by government agents directed at FDC supporters – a trend that portends problems for Uganda's democratisation process. Professor Oloka Onyango of Makerere University, argues that the elections were a wrong start for the nascent pluralistic democracy in the East African country, because they underscored the fear that peaceful change of government will continue to elude the country. "I see more disaster for Uganda because the president is not used to competition and he will treat any opposition as treason. I see a worse situation that we have had," Oloka Onyango said in an interview. The European Union (EU) observer team noted that the opposition, especially Besigye - who spent much of the campaign period in court facing as-yet unresolved cases of rape and treason - had faced extreme bias from government organs. In a preliminary assessment of the vote, the EU monitors said the opposition had been denied access and coverage in state-run media while Museveni's party, the National Resistance Movement Organisation, enjoyed access to considerable government resources to boost its campaign. "A level playing field was not in place for these elections," they said, adding that a solution to the problem might be found in the restoration of term limits. "It would be wise for the future parliament to consider re-instituting limits on the number of presidential terms for future presidential election." A group of western countries under the Partners for Democracy and Governance umbrella issued a statement that fell short of proclaiming the vote free and fair, saying however, that they had noted "with satisfaction the discipline and restraint generally displayed by all parties during the polls and urges all concerned to continue to observe the rule of law".