ABSURDUS apoPLEXUS

After 29 years of continuous "democratic" one-man-rule (and with no term limits in sight), it's only natural that a leader would be less inclined to think before he speaks making ever more preposterous statements; one could even assume that the preposterousness is proportional to time in power. Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni is no exception to this phenomenon.

 

Last year for example, when the US was threatening to cut aid due to pending anti-gay legislation, he declared that his country is "one of the richest in the world" and asked instead from the Americans for scientific cooperation to determine whether gays are born that way (and if so, to maybe reconsider his country’s tactic of jailing them just because they are).

 

In his latest interview, Museveni stated that his country is suffering of too much freedom. Yes, apparently there is such an affliction as too much freedom. Sure, freedom is a wonderful thing that fundamentally improves people's life, but so is oxygen but breath too much of it and you get hyperoxia. Or ice-cream, who doesn't love ice-cream? But if you don't know better and eat too much you end up with a stomach ache. Freedom is apparently no different.

 

Museveni therefore probably believes that there is a level of optimal freedom that presumably he would like to legislate for the good of his citizens. It's all good to be free to vote for whatever candidate you like (from the approved, single-candidate list) or kneel in front of your favorite politician and beg him to run for another term (as Museveni's supporters spontaneously do), but it’s simply madness to be free to say whatever comes to mind or dispute your government's infallibility.

To summarize, Uganda, per its perennial leader, is the "richest" and "freest" in the world and therefore the best country ever and people should be trampling all over each other to move there. The fact that they aren’t just goes to prove how ahead of his time Museveni is (or the reverse).