Otunnu, why attack the society that built you?Publish Date: Sep 08, 2009 Newvision Archive
· By Edward Mulindwa AS Uganda gets shaken by the return of Olara Otunu, and as he plans to re-enter Ugandan politics, I have a concern that must be addressed directly to him. The issue of a creation and support of the system. Every nation must have a system that runs it, and that system is the one that educates students to build the nation in future. That system is up and above the Movement, Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), Uganda People’s Congress (UPC) and any other party. Governments come and go, but the system remains. A long time ago, that system educated all students in the country, without caring about their tribe, place of origin, or whose child they were. Among those children were the two sons of Uganda, Otunnu and Bazilio Okello. Both were given tests and Otunnu passed highly, but Okello did not. The system in Uganda decided to pay an enormous amount of money to put Otunnu’s brains to test. He passed all exams he was given to a point that Uganda gave him a passport and a ticket to further his studies. And all the Ugandan society wanted out of him was to write proposals that could build and maintain the system in Uganda. The Ugandan society sent Okello to the armed forces to be trained as a soldier to defend the borders of our country and to get instructions from our politicians. Instructions that were supposed to be built and written by Otunnu. I must point out that both Otunnu and Okello were not educated or trained to serve UPC the party or Obote the president but, Uganda the state. How then did Otunnu end up in a barracks to serve Okello? Why did he fail to realise that when Okello, who was not a politician, but a trained soldier takes a government, it directly contravenes everything we educated him to build. Why did he not simply refuse to join the Okello, let alone resign his job? One of my friends in Ottawa, Canada, was a financial controller of the Uganda embassy during Amin’s government. At its fall, she had an embassy account with about $5m. This friend, irrespective of what was happening in Kampala (everyone was running away and looting), walked into an Ottawa bank and instructed them to transfer all the funds to the Kampala Ministry of Foreign Affairs account. This Ugandan did what she was trained to do, not what she felt. Trust me, I am in Canada, but if you gave me $5m today, I would receive it with glee. But this official was trained to fight and defend the system, not Amin’s government, but the state of Uganda and that is the reason for this article. What we work hard for, is to protect the nation’s assets. Otunnu’s decision to work for Okello the man he wrote policies for, must make Ugandans pause and ask where we went wrong. Did we educate him wrong? Did we fail to teach him that nationalism is the best thing for Uganda? Did we, as society, fall short in educating him on the ways and means of building and defending that system? If we were wrong in any of the above, then we must sit down again and re-configure how to educate Ugandan children better than we did Otunnu. We simply cannot educate children to run the system and have them turn around to work against it. However, there is a possibility Otunnu got the best education, but he is simply a bad apple. Maybe he naturally never cared about the system and about building it, let alone maintaining it. Maybe all along it was only about himself and he never cared at all about Uganda and her political growth. If the latter is true, then Ugandans must stand up and strip him to the last wire, to find out why he has started attacking the very system it was supposed to serve and protect. We must have a commission of inquiry where Otunnu must be given a constitutional right to respond. He must respond to the disturbing events that happened at the government take-over that brought Okello to power. This is the only thing that will clear Otunnu and make Ugandans trust him. It will also show respect to the thousands of Ugandans in the Diaspora who work day and night in defence, not of the Movement, but the system that runs our country. And I would even take further by setting up a parliamentary commission to crosscheck each and every decision Otunnu made while he was ambassador. The commission will cross-check if he made those decisions in defence and protection of our country. The writer lives in Toronto, Canada [email protected] Thé Mulindwas Communication Group "With Yoweri Museveni and Dr. Kiiza Besigye Uganda is in anarchy" Kuungana Mulindwa Mawasiliano Kikundi "Pamoja na Yoweri Museveni na Dk. Kiiza Besigye Uganda ni katika machafuko"
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