Folks, Hon Ruzindana’s call for………. a radical fight against corruption is *to uncouple the institutions of the State from the ruling party and the military*………..IS SPOT OON.
The voices of Ugandans calling for institutional renewal cannot be ignored. We are calling for a constitutional Conference!! Thank you Hon Ruzindana. *IMF demand for ‘a radical fight against corruption’ is unrealistic* The issue of corruption, both bureaucratic and political leadership, remains a major concern in Uganda at the level of the IMF and the international community and this concern has gone down to the ordinary citizen. The IMF has warned that corruption will lower expected growth forecasts and more importantly, that recovery from the current economic growth decline will be slow (or unlikely) unless there is “a more radical fight against corruption”. The above prescription is obviously impossible but as usual, the IMF and the international community will continue to conduct their relations with the regime as if it is actually possible for it (the government) to follow this IMF prescription and initiate radical reforms against corruption. This is like a situation where a doctor prescribes drugs to a patient well knowing that no matter the patient’s desire to follow the doctor’s instructions, the prescription is beyond his means; he/she cannot afford the drugs for the full required dose. The situation may even be more complicated by the fact that even if the drugs were donated the patient may not be able to follow the strict orders for taking them. This is the situation in Uganda. Even if one is charitable and accept that may be the leadership is genuine in its public commitment against corruption, it would still be difficult to see how it would be able to seriously fight corruption well knowing that corruption has become embedded in the regime’s character. In other words, it needs a very wide sense of imagination to envisage a thoroughly corrupt regime, a regime whose survival is predicated on corruption to radically fight corruption. The basic requirement to change the character of the regime and make possible a radical fight against corruption is to uncouple the institutions of the State from the ruling party and military because this institutional fusion has profound consequences that facilitate privileged access (theft, embezzlement, waste, mismanagement, corruption) to public resources to reward supporters and to build the machinery for elections. Political life is structured around the leader and a number of strongmen with “clientelist pyramids and factional networks”. Thus the ruler entertains and redresses individual grievances personally without recourse to state institutions since public resources are already privatised for the benefit of loyalists. In this situation where power, authority and control over formal State structures is concentrated in one individual, all State structures, already frail because of resource constraints, are thereby so weakened that no matter the ferocious rhetoric against corruption in response to the IMF and others, in practice business will continue as usual. Therefore, institutions, whether against corruption or designed to make procurement transparent, will not work. Where public funds are routinely deposited on personal accounts, where billions are stolen without consequences, where a suspect for corruption hero worship, leading to demonstrations for his release, charging him is rightly considered a discriminatory act, then you ought to know that matters have gone beyond reform. My conclusion, therefore, is that whatever the IMF and others may do in Uganda should not be predicated on the realistic expectation of “a more radical fight against corruption” because that fight will not take place. Ask for an expeditionary force to Mali, Darfur or wherever but not a radical fight against corruption.
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