Is Museveni’s ‘Securing Your Future’ empty sloganeering?

By Derrick Were

With the presidential campaigns that are ongoing, different candidates have come out with different slogans that they assumed alluring to the electorate so that they may hand them the mandate to run the presidential office come January 14, 2021.

Of course, we can’t forget the comic ones like John Katumba and Willy Mayambala who, due to my ignorance, don’t seem to have any serious rallying phrases for themselves.

How they’re gonna come out of this is still a point of contention, but I guess they must have an exit strategy out of all this debacle that awaits them at the end of the campaign trail.

However, most notably, is the NRM slogan of “Securing Your Future.”

Without sounding disrespectful or insulting, choosing such a slogan at such a time seems to me as one of those funny moments when a young child expects their parent to buy them a bike yet the parent has never even made an attempt to find out how much the bike in question costs.

Somehow, I fail to get the real words to describe the current situation, but putting into context the principle of a “sinking boat,” I think both the promiser and promised don’t stand better chances of survival, although one of them ought to have a backup plan that the other, either openly knows or has been hoodwinked to think that it is non-existent, for the safety of the beneficiary.

One of the things that usually would have been on the common man’s lips would be the different promises that they never seem to see come to fulfilment.

But in the end, who cares? If I give you my Shs5,000 to vote me and in the end, I get an assured clean pay-cheque for the next five years, would you complain of not seeing things done for you?

Plus, it’s evident that in our politics, the biggest bidder takes it all.

I always find it a bit odd to believe that there’s actually some kind of voter bribery in our political arena.

Wouldn’t it come to a win-win conclusion then? Because if I give you and you give me, who then are you to come complaining of poor service delivery in the end?

I know someone will say these voters are actually aware that they were bought by the leader they put to task.

It’s obviously hypocritical of our voters to pretend not to remember that desperate moment when they needed that bribe, but such is what we call a human being.

Very pretentious, hypocritical and fickle whenever their interests are served quickly change their loyalty when a better deal comes into play.

Being that the system is corrupt from our nursery school, what would you expect at the top?

Anyway, I love the campaign strategy of the incumbent as regards meeting the district leaders mainly in his campaigns, in a bid to safeguard the electorate from getting exposed to coronavirus.

But the high handedness of the security operatives when it comes to some of his main challengers can’t go unnoticed. Maybe we are yet to see an improvement as far as crime prevention is concerned as well.

On whether it’s possible to have our future secured or not (wouldn’t want to sound pessimistic), one may be at a loss of words or even uncertain of whether it’s a good time to even talk about the future with the same conditions for some more years to come.

That said, does the phrase, “May the best candidate win” still make sense? That’s a discussion for another day.

But stay safe and remember, this is a season. Don’t die in it because we still have a lot to catch up on ahead of us.

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