IN CONTRAST to the scrutiny afforded President Paul Kagame of Rwanda, Uganda's president, Yoweri Museveni, has been treated kindly by international media. But that may change now that he has announced he is running for another term as president in elections due in 2011. At some point, a closer examination is due.
Uganda is not as oppressive as Rwanda and is not implicated to the same extent in the bloodletting in neighbouring Congo. But it cannot boast the same success. Peace is holding in troubled north of the country, but the economy there remains in a pitiful state. Joseph Kony, the messianic and sadistic leader of the Lord's Resistance Army, which displaced a million people in the north and butchered thousands more, remains at large. Mr Museveni takes no responsibility for that failure.
Indeed, judged by his original promises when he came to power in 1986, Mr Museveni has performed dismally. Democracy has increasingly been corroded by militarism and jawing about a liberation struggle most Ugandans are too young to remember. Achievements in macroeconomic policy have been offset by favouritism and corruption. The country is drifting at best. Mr Museveni disparages donors, but uses them to pad out his national budget. Recent oil finds in the Lake Albert basin have made him indispensable to many of those donors, but they need to think carefully about whether another five years of Mr Museveni's increasingly regal and shuffling rule could spell disaster for a country that desperately needs ideas and impetus.
At a recent Youth Day parade, Mr Museveni sought to win over angry unemployed young men with a promise to lower the retirement age in the civil service to 55 (he is 66, but would be exempt). The government might create 40,000 new jobs with the move, but that is not nearly enough for a country that needs to create 400,000 jobs each year to stand still.
Mr Museveni has been careful to prevent any younger candidates building up a power base that could challenge him. He appears determined to stay until 2016, even if it means dividing his party, alienating military commanders, and arresting opposition leaders such as Olaru Otunnu, who used to work for the United Nations. That Mr Museveni is even willing to try is a reflection of the failure of the media, human rights groups, and diplomats to push back against the dubious landslide victories credited this year to Prime Minister Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia, as well as to Mr Kagame.
Negotiations with oil companies appear to have been tough and in Uganda's national interest. But will the predicted oil revenues be used transparently? Even some of Mr Museveni's former allies have their doubts, arguing that the president has been too willing to turn a blind eye to corruption in return for political support.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/baobab/2010/09/yoweri_museveni
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