Dracula Taking
Over Uganda's Blood Bank?
Monitor,
July 31, 2001
The
revelations by former Greenland Bank Managing Director Suleiman Kiggundu are
shocking.
In
short, Kiggundu claimed that President Yoweri Museveni, Bank of Uganda
officials including the late Governor Charles Kikonyongo, the whole Ministry
of Finance beginning with then Finance minister Jehoash Mayanja, then Attorney
General Bert Katureebe, Museveni's younger brother Maj. Gen. Salim Saleh and
his son Lt. Kainerugaba Muhoozi, and the Privatisation Unit discussed at
length the controversial sale of Uganda Commercial Bank in an underhand way to
the Malaysian firm Westmont.
That
all these people in effect agree to a deal that was all but a looting of the
country's largest bank, and plotted to hide the facts from the owners of the
bank - the Ugandan people.
When
the scandal was blowing over, and donors were getting angry, Maj. Gen. Saleh
stepped forward to take the blame personally in order to deflect the blame
from the government; and Kiggundu became the sacrificial lamb.
Even
if only one tenth of what Kiggundu alleged is true, it raises very troubling
about the government's moral right to govern. In addition, it shows that the
reason official corruption remains pervasive, is that there is no serious
commitment at the top to deal with, and in fact some of the most powerful
leaders in the country privately condone it.
Minister
of State Matthew Rukikaire resigned from government because he didn't live
with the lie any more, and Katureebe's conscience is also reported to have
caught up with him, as he felt that one could no longer be an Attorney General
of Uganda without being a first class crook.
For
all this, the UCB scam represents just the tip of the iceberg of the rot that
went on in regard to its privatization, and other sales of public enterprises.
It seems we are not too far away from the Dracula being in charge of the
Uganda blood bank (Treasury) in Uganda. All democrats and people of goodwill
must wake up and reclaim the country from the ruin of
corruption.