Museveni regime facing tough opposition

Uganda

Forecast:  Museveni regime buckling under stress of popular opposition protests; foreign firms at risk

Despite the recent spate of global political events which signals to all political leaders that the era of wholesale violation of human and political rights of citizens is at an end, longtime Uganda President Yoweri Museveni is determined to test the emerging paradigm shift. Museveni’s security forces have in recent weeks brutishly attacked opposition leader Kizza Besigye and his supporters.

Besigye, Museveni’s former physician and friend has run unsuccessfully twice against the Museveni regime and is now seeking to topple the regime from the streets. The excessively grotesque manner by which the security personnel have mishandled Besigye (at one point bundling him with a wounded hand onto the back of a pickup vehicle) may actually trigger the very thing that the Museveni government wants to prevent – a spontaneous people’s revolution.

Foreign players in Uganda’s new energy sector, as well as other larger foreign investors in the country ought to contemplate the political repercussions of an end of the Museveni regime and take appropriate risk mitigation strategies to limit the negative fallout from such an event. Foreign firms who have won large energy and other commercial concessions under Museveni will come under strong suspicions by any new post–Museveni regime