For Federation to Succeed, Uganda Must Shape Up
By PATRICK ABAL
East African Presidents Yoweri Museveni, Mwai Kibaki and Benjamin Mkapa. Kenya has largely come off as a maturing nation and Tanzania is a bastion of stability. Uganda remains the odd man out
The East African Federation as it is being proposed has one pariah – Uganda. This cannot be ignored and I am sure the countries in the project would wish to be careful not to deliver a stillborn union.
While Kenya, despite its difficult and sometimes strenuous politics, has largely come off as a maturing nation, and with Tanzania clearly a bastion of stability – despite the headache of the Indian Ocean Islands – the clear political pariah is Uganda.
Everyone who can discern political trends now knows that the Movement will collapse. It has passed its zenith and natural law requires it to fall. The leaders, however, are still having their hair cut in confidence like those aristocrats on the Titanic who, even when they were being told of a problem on the bottom deck, assumed that the problem would be solved one way or the other. Unfortunately, there was no solution – the Titanic went down to the bottom of the sea.
I recently asked one of my friends who, at the time of the 1986 takeover by the NRM, sang loudly that they were going "to leave no stone unturned," about the stones they had overturned. He simply waved it off, saying, "Man, things happen." Yes, things do happen.
The problem is that the pariah has not developed a system of institutions that can run by themselves without being pushed by the chief executive – he directs the judiciary on how to rule on cases, decides in advance what parliament must resolve, deploys the army whenever and wherever his whims direct him, all without explaining anything to anyone. He alone defines Uganda’s foreign friends and enemies; he alone knows how the Ugandan economy's trillions of shillings' deficit is juggled; he is the repository of all the wisdom and vision of 24 million Ugandans and can change the rules as and when he wishes – he is the Alfa and the Omega, the beginning and the end of Uganda.
Which of East Africa's leaders could sleep comfortably in State House for 18 years while nearly two million of the country's citizens are sleeping in the bush? Where else is it officially acceptable to rig elections, because the rigging starts from manipulating the law governing elections – where a Speaker will shout down a Member of Parliament telling him to shut up?
This is the same pariah that contributed the most towards the collapse of the East African Community in the 1970s through military dictatorship, arrogance and callousness intertwined with pervasive corruption and cronyism.
Unless these issues are swiftly sorted out, the proposed federation will not hold. I am certain the member states would not wish to inherit the problems of a pariah in the hope that they will be swallowed up in the larger unit. Strong coalitions – for that is what political unions are – are those built around principled units that individually appreciate their own strengths and shortcomings and try to work towards standards – not the omnibus chorus, "We are equal partners."
The Nepad Peer Review Mechanism suffers from this disease and this explains why it is unlikely to go far. That, too, is why Turkey is being vetted seriously by the European Union. Can the East African partners come up with some benchmarks to guide the formative process and ensure that we have a union free from political mediocrity?
We read of President Benjamin Mkapa’s speech when the UN Security Council was in East Africa recently – it would make a good vetting baseline to work from.
Patrick Abal is based at the School of International and Public Affairs of Columbia University, New York, US
By PATRICK ABAL
East African Presidents Yoweri Museveni, Mwai Kibaki and Benjamin Mkapa. Kenya has largely come off as a maturing nation and Tanzania is a bastion of stability. Uganda remains the odd man out
The East African Federation as it is being proposed has one pariah – Uganda. This cannot be ignored and I am sure the countries in the project would wish to be careful not to deliver a stillborn union.
While Kenya, despite its difficult and sometimes strenuous politics, has largely come off as a maturing nation, and with Tanzania clearly a bastion of stability – despite the headache of the Indian Ocean Islands – the clear political pariah is Uganda.
Everyone who can discern political trends now knows that the Movement will collapse. It has passed its zenith and natural law requires it to fall. The leaders, however, are still having their hair cut in confidence like those aristocrats on the Titanic who, even when they were being told of a problem on the bottom deck, assumed that the problem would be solved one way or the other. Unfortunately, there was no solution – the Titanic went down to the bottom of the sea.
I recently asked one of my friends who, at the time of the 1986 takeover by the NRM, sang loudly that they were going "to leave no stone unturned," about the stones they had overturned. He simply waved it off, saying, "Man, things happen." Yes, things do happen.
The problem is that the pariah has not developed a system of institutions that can run by themselves without being pushed by the chief executive – he directs the judiciary on how to rule on cases, decides in advance what parliament must resolve, deploys the army whenever and wherever his whims direct him, all without explaining anything to anyone. He alone defines Uganda’s foreign friends and enemies; he alone knows how the Ugandan economy's trillions of shillings' deficit is juggled; he is the repository of all the wisdom and vision of 24 million Ugandans and can change the rules as and when he wishes – he is the Alfa and the Omega, the beginning and the end of Uganda.
Which of East Africa's leaders could sleep comfortably in State House for 18 years while nearly two million of the country's citizens are sleeping in the bush? Where else is it officially acceptable to rig elections, because the rigging starts from manipulating the law governing elections – where a Speaker will shout down a Member of Parliament telling him to shut up?
This is the same pariah that contributed the most towards the collapse of the East African Community in the 1970s through military dictatorship, arrogance and callousness intertwined with pervasive corruption and cronyism.
Unless these issues are swiftly sorted out, the proposed federation will not hold. I am certain the member states would not wish to inherit the problems of a pariah in the hope that they will be swallowed up in the larger unit. Strong coalitions – for that is what political unions are – are those built around principled units that individually appreciate their own strengths and shortcomings and try to work towards standards – not the omnibus chorus, "We are equal partners."
The Nepad Peer Review Mechanism suffers from this disease and this explains why it is unlikely to go far. That, too, is why Turkey is being vetted seriously by the European Union. Can the East African partners come up with some benchmarks to guide the formative process and ensure that we have a union free from political mediocrity?
We read of President Benjamin Mkapa’s speech when the UN Security Council was in East Africa recently – it would make a good vetting baseline to work from.
Patrick Abal is based at the School of International and Public Affairs of Columbia University, New York, US
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