The Monitor (Kampala)
OPINION
July 25, 2003
Posted to the web July 25, 2003
David Ouma Balikowa
Kampala
Last week The Monitor published what to many people might have passed as a cheeky letter by Mr Gabriel Morri (Let's Privatise The Kony War, June 16, 2003).
Morri says the havoc wrecked by the rebels in northern Uganda in the last 15 years has reached an unbearable point. To stem the war, he comes up with an ingenious proposal. He wants the government to tender and privatise the war against the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA).
In his humble opinion, UPDF commanders should enter joint ventures with NGOs and investors in a bid to defeat the rebels.
The donors, he argues, would find no problem bankrolling the project. Not after hailing Uganda for the successes it has made in its privatisation drive.
People reading this letter might have thought the author made the proposals with a tongue in the cheek. Much as President Museveni is bent on privatising almost everything under the sun, he is not about to let the army go.
Ofcourse there are those who will argue that Museveni has actually privatised it already. You probably have heard over and over again the opposition accusing him of using the army like his personal property to keep himself in power.
If we were to stretch that logic further, Museveni would probably only permit privatising the army if it went to him as a monopoly business.
But that is a matter I would rather leave to Museveni's opposition.
Whatever the merits of Morri's proposals, it is important to appreciate where he is coming from on this matter.
One would for example want to understand why the UPDF, publicly rated by Museveni as one of the strongest armies in Africa, has failed to defeat a bunch of rag tag rebels that have dogged his entire 17 year rule. Or how an army that sent its troops thousands of kilometers inside the DR Congo trying to overthrow a foreign government is now using peasant arrow boys to confront a well-armed and resilient rebel force?
It might sound like a small matter. But before endangering the lives of the ill prepared Teso peasants, the army should explain what the battalions withdrawn from Congo are doing. Resting?
Or what happened to the 23 percent of the budget cut from other sectors to boost up the army? That was only a few months ago. And how much of this will be paid to the arrow boys?
It is the lack of answers to such questions that propel suggestions like that of Morri. Besides, the common view in government is that public institutions that have failed to deliver services should be privatised.
The majority of army generals have after all been very successful in their private businesses. Some own a chain of businesses and houses.
That could explain something: That while they have failed as a collective (army) to command the war to the end, as individuals they are quite enterprising. Left to run the army as personal businesses, they could perhaps do a better job to the taxpayer's satisfaction.
Just recently, Lt. Gen. Salim Saleh said that if he were given Shs 4 billion, he would bring the war to an end.
But in Morri's logic, the tender would create an immense choice of proposals.
First, there would be competition. That would bring the price Saleh is proposing down. Not only that. The endemic corruption in the army would be done away with.
And those that win tenders to fight the war would either do it or be made to refund the money. That is how public tenders work, no short cuts.
Of course, the war investors could soon discover that ending the war requires more than having superior weapons. They might soon discover the political element that fuels the war.
If it comes to that, it would still be their business to sort that out. All Ugandans would demand for is value for their money; no more no less.
At this point, the guns would point in a different direction, trying to sort out the political aspects of the war first. And precisely that is why Museveni will privatise everything under the sun, but not the army.
