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Letter to A Kampala Friend
By Muniini K. Mulera In Toronto |
We shall truly know them by their fruits
Nov 3, 2003
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Dear Tingasiga: Deeds speak louder than words. We shall know them by their fruits. Thus wrote President Yoweri Museveni at the end of his latest missive published in the press last week. On this point I am one with him. It is not the length of a ruler's missives or the eloquence of his speeches extolling his own achievements [and rarely It is not the volume with which his praise singers and court jesters recite his purported monopoly on a vision for the country that will make or break said the country's fortunes. It is the ruler's deeds that will deterrmine the fate of his country. That Museveni and the National Resistance Movement (NRM) pulled Uganda from the precipice and tried to redirect it towards recovery is a fact. Museveni and the NRM deserve credit for trying and, to a large extent, succeeding in their self-prescribed mission of nursing part of Uganda back to respectable economic, social and political health. However, Ugandans now live in the post-NRM era, whose reality must form the basis for determining whether or not Museveni and his cronies are still good for the country. Many have written and spoken about the NRM's dangerous U-turn from its earlier promise of a fundamental change in the country's politics. Dr Kizza Besigye's essay on the state of the NRM and the country in late 1999, for which Museveni unsuccessfully attempted to court martial him, remains a landmark analysis. However, for a more recent and non-partisan assessment of the Museveni regime, Ugandan Supreme Court Justice George W. Kanyeihamba's book, Constitutional and Political History of Uganda: From 1894 to the present [Centenary Publishing House, 2002] is a must read. First, Kanyeihamba has continuously lived in Uganda since 1986, during which time he has served as a minister, a Constituent Assembly Delegate and a Justice of the Supreme Court of Uganda. Second, he is gainfully employed, complete with secure tenure, in one of the top jobs in the land. Thus one cannot accuse him of sour graping. Third, he does not belong to any opposition group. He is a historical member of the NRM, though he is now non-partisan as demanded by his position on the judiciary. Fourth, many readers of this column may not have had an opportunity to read Kanyeihamba's excellent book. Kanyeihamba writes about the Museveni regime's "inexplicable tolerance" of corruption and abuse of office by some of its supporters; and the regime's He talks about the demand that Museveni's opinion must be given unquestionable support; the use of patronage appointments to bribe political opponents and critics; and the leadership's obsession with playing political games aimed at self-perpetuation. Kanyeihamba writes: The NRM government can be indicted for condoning Although the NRM High Command accused previous governments of interfering in commerce and trade personally, the present leadership has not been acquitted of this charge. The NRM is indicted for abandoning its socialist and popular policies in preference for an ultra capitalist economy in which the same leadership or those closest to it personally benefit. The NRM is indicted for destroying the Ugandan economy in such a way that the peasants have gained but very little while those in the inner circle, have harvested the greatest rewards. Perhaps the greatest disservice the NRM has rendered to Uganda is the monetization of democracy and the abandonment of the principle of individual merit. The overriding consideration in the NRM brand of democracy has not been the free choice of the people, but the election of members who can toe the party line of whatever description. Politicians and public officers who have acted in accordance with the law and norms of proper governance have been branded traitors and some of them have been dismissed from office. The NRM government is rightly condemned for having allowed the democratic electoral processes to deteriorate from the position it found them during the [Milton] Obote administration. Unless a candidate is in communion with the NRM leadership and supported by it politically and financially, it becomes almost miraculous for that candidate to be elected to whatever office. Increasingly, the country is governed by cadres who bought their way into government and their main contribution is either money or blind support they give or promise to give to the NRM leadership. This system of wanting support for the sake of personal aggrandizement and fortunes, has totally distorted the concepts of the rule of law, personal liberty, democracy and good governance. The NRM top leadership has exhibited excessive intolerance for freedom of _expression_ and association, going far beyond what is demonstrably acceptable even in a restricted democracy. Those who sing the same tune as the leadership, however incompetent or regardless of their records of abuse of power or acts of misbehaviour, alleged but not investigated or actually committed but not punished, have been and continue to be adequately rewarded. Politics in Uganda has become highly personalised and monetized. Nothing else matters except the support of the leadership and whatever that leadership chooses to do for Uganda, Ugandans are expected to be mightily Museveni's inner circle of advisers has become smaller and its personnel are ethnically related to one another by birth or by marriage. Moreover, despite the fact that the members of this inner circle has behaved and acted in the same manner and occasionally transgressed beyond the practices of other Ugandans, their rates of survival, or of retention in public positions or jobs or of generating sympathy and forgiveness from the top echelons of the Movement have always appeared higher and better than those of ordinary Ugandans. It is this same group of people or their relatives and friends who now allegedly dominate the NRM senior posts of administration, the parastatals and other public institutions. It is this circle which finds it easy to acquire government contracts and concessions, loans and recommendations to enter into international and other transactions. Consequently, it is not surprising that nowadays Ugandans whisper in private conversations that the NRM administration is riddled with blatant nepotism and personal patronage and that employment and appointments on merit have withered away with most of the policies of the Ten Point Programme which excited and inspired Ugandans, who joined the NRM in January 1986. These are not Muniini Mulera's words. These are [a slightly abridged version] of Justice Kanyeihamba's observations on the state of Uganda today and Museveni's vision for the future of our country. |
� 2003 The Monitor Publications
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