Dictator Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni said the comments of a frail old dictator cannot harm Somalia or deter the progress made. The reality is that Somalia is a democratic, recovering state, not a dictatorship.
We pray for our brothers and sisters in Uganda peaceful power transfer after Museveni. tried dodging a diplomatic landmine, but landed in one when he chose to single out Somalia as an example of a nation without a state. Museveni was speaking on Monday at an annual judge’s conference in the capital, Kampala when he made the remarks which have attracted the ire of Somalis online.
The Ugandan leader during his remarks went into drawing distinctions between the words: state, nation and country. “I take this occasion to remind the conference about the state, what is the state? The state is different from the country, it’s different from the nation. Country means the land where you have authority over, nation means people if a common origin. “State means organized authority over the country. You can,
therefore, have a country without a state. I’m going to going to give you examples where there is a country, but there is no state. “There is no organized authority over that land, Somalia is one example, there are quite a number of examples, but for diplomatic reasons I don’t want to mention them.” The group of the Somalis largely premised on history and partly over events that have happened over the past few years with Museveni being the only Ugandan leader for decades.
The historical aspect stemmed from the crucial role that the then stable Somalia played in saving Uganda from a deadly war with neighbouring Tanzania in the 1970s.