Is Otunnu a Star Or a Flash in the Pan?

Byline: Daniel K. Kalinaki

The low-key response to Olara Otunnu's homecoming offers scholars a treatise on how not to launch a political campaign.

Mr Otunnu's return to Uganda after 23 years in exile was supposed to be a seismic political event similar to Dr Kizza Besigye's return from exile in 2005 and his subsequent arrest and trial for rape and treason.

However, while Mr Otunnu's return generated an impressive amount of local and international media coverage, it was more of a tremor than an earthquake on the political Richter scale.

What was meant to be a journey pregnant with political intent had, by the time he prepared to return home to New York this week, miscarried into little more than a voyage of discovery.

Several factors can help explain why Mr Otunnu, a supernova in the galaxy of Diaspora politics, could fizzle so quickly after his return home.

The first is time. Twenty three years - the length of time the former Foreign Affairs minister spent in exile - is a long time in politics. To put it in perspective, someone who was born the day Mr Otunnu left is now out of university and probably holding their first job.

Almost seven out of every 10 Ugandans - and more than one out of every two voters in 2011-- had not been born or learnt …