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HELLO MR PRESIDENT
By David Ouma Balikowa |
Rather walk naked but protect MuseveniOct 8, 2004 - Monitor
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Members of Parliament while discussing the UPDF Bill last Thursday said they wanted the Presidential Guards Brigade (PGD) reduced to a manageable force.
According to some MPs, it is irrational to have a big force protecting one person while the rest of the country remained vulnerable to possible attacks from criminal groups.
Buikwe MP Wegonda Muguli is reported to have said it was morally unsustainable to have a whole brigade protecting only one man and his family.
While Kwania MP Tomson Agaga Odur remarked that in an era of modern technology, numbers do not matter.
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CHEERFUL BUT NEEDY: Most of the countryfolk can hardly afford both a shirt and a pair of shorts for their children
(File photo) |
The MPs were certainly spot-on. But their logic was not appreciated by the likes of Col. Kahinda Otafiire, the minister for Lands and
Environment. A president�s praise singer, Mr Ssemakula Kiwanuka, the State Minister for Luwero, supported him.
It is important to understand where the above two ministers� thinking is premised.
Otafiire talks of increasing threats of terrorism, while Semakula reminds the nation of the president�s importance.
The two ministers� concerns were not lost on the MPs. Actually the MPs agree in principle with the ministers. They only disagree on the means of achieving the president�s protection.
The bill itself is not hard to decipher in motive. One only has to put it into the political context.
Here is a country that has only one man with a vision. He is the eye and ear of the nation. If anything happened to him, the country would be kaput. Absolutely.
The country would be plunged into total darkness. The likes o
f
Otafiire or Semakula would be totally lost. They would not even be able to run back and hide in their villages.
It is that serious.
In the circumstances, the citizens would be best advised to starve themselves or even walk about naked but put all their money on protecting the President
Many Ugandans are after all already paying the huge sacrifice to keep the President protected.
In many Ugandan villages, children go about their ravaged lives in Adam�s and Eve�s suits - naked.
In many other villages, the one and only wife�s gomesi is still used as a blanket for the matrimonial bed. The day the wife goes for a visit or for a funeral, the husband will have to grab the nearest dirty bug-infested gunny bag.
Such a people will be only too willing to let the man with the country�s vision lavish all the country�s resources on his protection.
Besides the huge sacrifice of citizens having to walk about naked to protect their president, the guards al
so
perform some essential duty. They beat up citizens during elections.
You see we are headed for the 2006 general elections and the opposition to the President has multiplied.
The president needs more guards to beat up the opposition chaps. Just incase they have forgotten that he is the only man with a vision for the country and ought not to be challenged.
Memories of peasants being kicked in the back and others shot by the then small Presidential Protection Unit for trying to campaign against the President are still alive among the population.
You see with the likes of FDC vowing to give the President a ride for his money, you need a much bigger presidential guard to do the good job of kicking them in the backs. This will straighten up their backs and thinking too.
In addition to the President being the only man with a vision, history ought to remind Ugandans that as leaders overstay in power, there is a tendency to be ruled by fear.
Most leade
rs will
increase their own security at the expense of leaving the population exposed to all sorts of danger.
So when the President starts to have more soldiers guarding him, Ugandans should know he is increasingly getting scared of them.
There is a lot about the PGB that people are yet to know. It is not an ordinary presidential protection force.
Many people basing on the size and numbers think it is an army within the UPDF, a sort of inner counter force the President will rely on in case of a mutiny.
As the most trusted force, word has it that they have been deployed in almost all army units to monitor movements within the army.
Those in the know say the PGB is very active in the north in the war against Joseph Kony�s Lords Resistance Army.
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� 2004 The Monitor Publications
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