President Yoweri Museveni has long been a favorite of people who matter in the West, like Hillary for example.
Alas, the old coot is becoming something of an embarrassment. Just recently there was the "kill the queers" bill that he signed into law, albeit after taking the death sentence out and replacing it with life in prison. That kind of stuff is frowned upon in most of our modern Western democracies, and Museveni needs to get with the program. In fact, he'd do his country a favour if he completely abandoned the homophobic rhetoric and promoted Uganda as a gay tourist destination instead.
Now there's a flap afoot over the censure of a TV channel that had the audacity to show footage of the President having a presidential nap in parliament. There are many reasons why a hard-working leader could be tired and need to catch a few winks, but the President's spokesman is just inviting disrespect by claiming he was meditating rather than napping.
On top of that, there are the headlines garnered by the miscreants who smuggled a pair of pigs into parliament to make a none-too-subtle statement about government corruption and the rapacious greed of the ruling class. The politicos are trying to give themselves a 40% pay raise on top of the Western scale pay packets they already award themselves, and this in a country where the vast majority makes do on less than $2 a day.
So Museveni needs to tread carefully. The dustbins of history overflow with our former besties who we betrayed when they became too embarrassing.
There's probably a team in the State Department readying a "colour revolution" for Uganda even as I write these words...
