By Mulengera Reporters
Idaho Senator Jim Risch, who chairs the all-powerful Foreign Relations Committee of the US Senate, says the Trump Administration needs to review the US relationship or friendship with Uganda in light of the CDF Gen MK’s “attacks on free speech, including shuttering major media houses this weekend.”
In a social media message posted on his X platform, the Republican Senator asserted that being hostile to free speech “makes him [Gen MK] & the UPDF unfit partners [or friends for the US].” And as a result, the Senator recommends to the Trump Administration thus: “We should only work with those who advance regional security, not diminish it.”
Senator Jim Risch is a Republican and his social media protest was in response to a very damaging/negative story that was done on Uganda by the Reuters, while reporting on the Sunday morning events which culminated into Gen MK taking to X to congratulate himself for having finally got the President endorse his proposal to clamp down on the NMG news outlets, including NTV and Daily Monitor newspaper.
This development represents a potential diplomatic escalation because Senator Jim Risch hails from the Republican party, which these days is less inclined to be interventionist into the affairs of other countries. The Trump-era Republican party’s widely accepted view is that the United State should disengage from perceiving itself as a world policeman obliged to help other countries sort out their own governance messes.
They believe that how strongmen like Gen MK govern their countries is none of their business. These are the talking points influential Republican party-inclined US podcasters, like Tucker Carlson, have been lately amplifying even in light of the US support for Israel and even its involvement in the Iran war. Generally speaking, the contemporary Republican party and generally the American public don’t have much appetite for foreign interventions. Trump made it clear at the dawning of his 2nd administration that he would like his interventions to be restricted on the western hemisphere (basically the Americas).
It’s against that background that the GoU foreign relations strategists must take very seriously Senator Jim Risch’s latest statement on Uganda and Gen MK who he implied can simply not continue being hostile to free speech and go after media houses and at the same time qualify to be a friend (he used the word partner) of the United States. That the Republican Senator writes what he wrote without even being prompted by Democrats on his committee or journalists is indicative of why the GoU and Gen MK’s supporters have reason to be very reflective in their responses.
Perhaps because they don’t anticipate the same escalating and ending into unintended diplomatic consequences (which could take the form of targeted sanctions or symbolically a much stronger rebuke at higher levels which could be by Secretary Rubio or a State Department strongly-worded statement), Gen MK’s diehard supporters like Balaam Barugahara and David Kabanda have taken no prisoners in their belligerent and provocative responses to the 83-year old Senator.
Imagine the matter ends up being openly discussed in any of the Foreign Relations Committee hearing sessions when the Senators say are hosting Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The whole thing could end very badly especially if the US media and Democrats were to jump on the issue and begin mounting pressure on the administration.
As has always been the case, the US leadership on this issue could incite similar or even harder responses from other liberal governments in North America, the UK and European Union as well. That way, the Ugandan government (desperate to achieve its 10-fold economic growth strategy growing our country’s GDP to $500bn by 2040) could find itself with a much bigger problem on its hands than many Ugandans are currently envisaging and than would be desirable at this point in time. The resultant western media scrutiny would end up going into many other things about Uganda, including how the country has been governed for the last 40 years of the NRM.
In his response directly to the Senator’s X post, Balaam Barugahara casually called on the Foreign Relations Committee chairman to respect Gen MK and stop making sweeping statements at the time the CDF is prioritizing Uganda’s national security concerns in light of the impugned media activities which landed the NMG in trouble in the first place. On his part, David Kabanda was even more belligerent and unrestrained. He accused the Senator of imperialistic tendencies and demanded to know how people running the US government would feel if the GoU officials were to rant and begin taunting them on the unprovoked aggression they have been occasioning onto Venezuela and more recently Iran.
The duo asked Senator Jim Risch to mind his damn business and leave the issues of Uganda to Ugandans and their leaders. Quite predictably, the two leaders’ belligerent stand inspired thousands of PLU online warriors to vigorously push back while engaging in all manner of name-calling against the 83-year-old Foreign Relations Committee Chairman who has been at Capitol Hill since the year 2009. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
