The Flip-Flopper Club

Flip-Flopper sounds like the sound of sandals Ugandans call slippa. In the American political lexicon, it is the political opportunist who changes his or her tunes by slurping the finger with saliva and testing where the winds are blowing. The sole purpose is winning and/or scoring a point. In that vein ex-governor and investment banker Mitt Romney fits the mold. The Obama campaign machinery, making a calculated guess that Romney is the likely Republican opponent to beat in 2012, has labeled the man as having no core value. Coming to crunch time of their primary season, Romney’s fellow competitions are also drumming similar beat.

Romney’s apologists are out countering with something of the cliché that change is a constant. Obama has also flip-flopped, so they say. We all change our positions at one time or another on the basis of new information or better insights. True, that we change. But how does one distinguish a flip-flopper from someone who has evolved due to better knowledge of a situation? That one is a tough one. May be we could call on the Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart in his stated test for identifying pornography: I know it when I see it. When Governor Romney destroys hard-drives to erase his trails during his tenure, there is a red flag.

If we know a flip-flopper when we see one, then there is no greater flip-flopper of the 21^st Century than Yoweri Museveni of Uganda. Museveni has defined opportunism to the extent that some wonder about his mental health. Is he so full of himself that he can say just about anything at no cost to himself? Is he a sociopath? Or, has he, like the rest of us, some issues arising from suboptimal developmental attachment circumstances that often chain the adult in skewed self-regulation states. Does a Mulokole background have something to do with it? What happened in the Banyimas’ household from which he is now bitterly alienated? Whatever it is, unfortunately for him and to our chagrins his outcome is playing out in the public arena.

What would you do if you stated publicly that the problem of Africa was leaders who hang on to power for too long? The flip-flopper did just that at the beginning of his rule. You know the rest of the story.

The man castigates the opposition in his country for harping on the issues of corruption without concrete evidence, but goes to the neighboring country of Rwanda and states that he is surrounded by thieves in his government. What kind of man is this?

Surprise!

                                      

Long before there was the Putin dance of constitutional manipulation, there was the original night-dancer of central Afrika. With the tacit complicity of a rubber-stamp Parliament he did his Afrikan witchcraft to ensure his effective life presidency. A few magic coins in the pockets or bras of parliamentarians sealed the deal.

Now, self-assured, here are what we get in this dirt-poor country. By the way, did you know that Uganda's GDP is less than half what Americans spend on their dogs and cats?

The dancer must of necessity have his swanky presidential jet which he must upgrade to a newer model every so often. His travel comfort taken care of, not unlike the wajeti of corporate America, there is no need for a national airline for the despised ninety-nine percent of us.

The treasury plunked in millions to refurbish a colonial governor’s mansion to a palace befitting of a dancing president. The Egyptian dancers may call theirs a palace, but look at what became of the last occupier. In the magic kingdom we know the power of words, so we choose the less pretentious “state house.”

 An obscene sum of money, few Ugandans can wrap their brain around, was paid to an NRM robber baron for a failed commercial transaction. The attorney general was corralled into signing off on the loot. Apparently his weak balls trumped his legal mind. It is conceivable that the fund found its way into the NRM political election machinery.

Are we into fiscal irresponsibility yet? The dancer, being afraid of his own shadows, runs the treasuries dry of the almighty dollar in order to equip his coercive forces with the latest phallic symbol of the latest Russian fighter jets. There were seismic tremors in the tiny economy as a result. I should be happy that now my remittances to those who benefit from my largesse can receive relative larger shillings from the tiny dollars I have to part with every so often. I am not happy for them because, on top of the dearth of dollars, gazillions of shillings were dumped into the economy to buy votes, bringing with them the inflationary Grinch.

You want to demonstrate? There is a law making its way that will lock you up without bail along with child rapists and body-parts hunters. Will history repeat itself? As a wily hunter of the delectable delicacy of anyeri, I always made sure I knew where I laid a trap lest I “accidentally” had my feet chopped off. Ms MP worthy of her chops should take it from a seasoned trapper that this law is a trap that might come to haunt her.

Ever been near a spoiled brat? Should you refuse to give him that shiny toy, he will scream and stomp his feet in an apoplectic frenzy. And so, if the 6^th parliament had not frustrated him, the dancer would have had power reaching my grass-roofed-mud-and-wattle village paradise—so, he complained, whined and called names.

Other than news, few shows on TV captivate me more than watching Nature. In one show it was fascinating to see the process of how a once-mighty alpha lion, with a huge mane, being manhandle (or rather lionhandle) by up-and-coming young Turks for dominance over mating rights in a pride. The old warrior ended up sauntering away limping alone to die in the brushes remote from the center of action he once controlled.

The South Africans dub him the Lion of Africa. Of course, brisk one-way trade to Uganda helps elicit such praise songs. The question for us here, however, is: Are the young Turks in Parliament now virile enough to challenge the lion and maul his tail? Or will the roaring and stomping of his feet scare away wanabe statesmen to retreat into their mothers’ wombs?

All along for twenty five years the writings have been on the wall. Only now are some benefactors shutting down the spigots of Dollars/BP/Euros. Probably seeing the man buying war toys from savings on Debt-Forgiveness gimmick ticked them off. Now, you also hear from the class of chief-you-kill-me-with-laughter brownosers: The man has changed. Surprise!