yesterday�s methods cannot solve today�s problems. UPC hasn�t changed!
Joe Nam
Joe Nam
I should congratulate the Uganda Peoples Congress (UPC) upon their successful submission of registration papers.
This is especially so, recalling that the party bigwigs once dismissed the exercise as �another movement ploy to muzzle democracy� under the political organisations act. It shows a kind of coming to terms with reality.
They marched to the Registrar General�s office in style. UPC members were once again conjuring up that carnival atmosphere of the 1980s. UTV was there to cover him and that is how we got to see it all.
But at a press conference recently, Dr James Rwanyarare said something which showed that UPC had learnt nothing and forgotten nothing. He said the party should be entrusted with state power to fight ignorance, poverty and disease. Come on James!
you don�t expect to use the political cliches of the 1960s, in the 21st Century, and expect to be taken seriously. Businesses change their commercials b y the month to win appeal and you are still using a line lifted from Okot P� Bitek�s book Song of Lawino by lazy politicians of the 1960 and 1980s, who could not coin a new catch-phrase. Does it not show bankruptcy of ideas?
The sub-standard debates in parliament that is now telecast live on TV are all pointers to the huge poverty of fresh ideas and thinking in the Ugandan body politic. If parliament can perform so dismally, then the quality of debate at district councils must be even worse.
I had occasion over Christmas to spend an evening in Kisoro with Dictrict Chairman, Dr Philemon Mateke and his Kabale counterpart Hudson Kakuru.
Kakuru took me on and expressed his disappointment with journalists and the media for not showing enough enthusiasm for kisanja (removal of term limits for the presidency in the constitution).
Outlining the remarkable achievements of the NRM, he said, �The president has done so much for the country, he deserves a thank you by giving him another term.� Kakuru would not let go of me. he wanted to know my view on the mode of thanking the president. I told him that I found a solicited �thank you� rather strange.
I told him of a man who one day summoned his large family and told them to be very grateful to him because he bought them food, clothes and paid their school fees. �What would you think of such a man?� I asked him.
The UPC boasts of building 23 big hospitals and other infra-structures. But since I accessed the World Bank records of the 1960s and got to know how much donor money flowed into those projects, I can no longer be taken for a cheap ride.
The writer is a New Vision freelance journalistPublished on: Tuesday, 25th January, 2005
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail - Helps protect you from nasty viruses.
_______________________________________________ Ugandanet mailing list [email protected] http://kym.net/mailman/listinfo/ugandanet % UGANDANET is generously hosted by INFOCOM http://www.infocom.co.ug/
