Ugandan Dictator playing cards with Grandchildren after Parliament gave him right to Life Presidency

President Yoweri Museveni captured in a rare light-hearted moment playing a game of cards with his grandchildren over the Christmas holiday, Wednesday Dec. 27, 2017.

The one in green and the one at right look slightly disengaged while the one at left laughs at the president's cluelessness over whose turn it next is.

From Museveni's point of view, 2017 was one of the easiest years at the helm of state.

There was no major regional security threat to Uganda that required troop readiness, although from about August tensions (or rumours of tensions), with Rwanda unexpectedly made news.

Starting around that time too, in August, maneouvres began to amend the national constitution to waive the upper and lower age ceilings of eligibility for the presidency.

Using the tried and tested political method of coaxing reluctant NRM Members of Parliament, Museveni was able then to simply turn it into a game of numbers in parliament against a heavily outnumbered opposition.

He could afford to close out the year with a moment of frivolity such as this game of cards, he now holding the cards on Uganda's political landscape.

A sense of frustrated resignation fell over civil society, the media, the political opposition and, going by opinion polls, a large number of Ugandans when the term-limit clause was amended.

In power since Jan. 1986, needless to say he is the only president of Uganda these youngsters have ever known.