Word: binaisa
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With that terse message, Radio Uganda last week proclaimed the ouster of President Godfrey Binaisa, 59. Scarcely a year after the overthrow of the despotic Idi Amin Dada and the installation of a civilian regime, the military was back in power. Protested one opponent of the army takeover: "They have succeeded in hijacking the government...
...Kampala, into a ghost town of deserted streets and shuttered houses, as citizens, still smarting from Amin's lethal rule, played it safe and stayed indoors. It was small comfort that the takeover was apparently masterminded by a former leader of the anti-Amin resistance: Paulo Muwanga, 56, Binaisa's Labor Minister and chairman of the six-member military commission of the Uganda National Liberation Front, which was formed in 1979 to topple Amin...
Despite these difficulties, roly-poly President Godfrey Binaisa boasts that "the country is making a very spectacular recovery. We are making wonderful progress in all areas of human endeavor." In fact, the country is no more secure than Binaisa's own shaky position as Uganda's second post-Amin Head of State. Since taking over from Yusufu Lule, his ousted predecessor, eight months ago, he has barely survived several no-confidence motions brought by his rivals in the country's interim parliament, the 129-member National Consultative Council. The main reason he has stayed in office seems...
Most of the demands for Binaisa's resignation involve charges that he has done little or nothing to root out entrenched government corruption. Last month Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere, whose troops did most of the fighting in the war against Amin, dispatched his Foreign Minister, Ben Mkapa, to Kampala with a harsh message: Tanzanians had not shed their blood and emptied their treasury so that Ugandan politicians could line their pockets and fight among themselves. By early March Nyerere had apparently become fed up with the continued political infighting. He was also annoyed that Binaisa's aides...
...announced. Said Obote: "The only issue in the election is whether you are pro-or anti-Tanzanian." Obote's threat merely adds to Uganda's uncertain future. Most Western diplomats believe that instability will last until the country has an elected government with a strong mandate. Binaisa said last week that national elections, originally scheduled for June 1981, might be held by November of this year. Until then, Uganda is likely to stumble from crisis to crisis. Says one Westerner in Kampala: "You don't rebuild a national sense of unity after eight years of rule...