ELIAS BIRYABAREMA
Kampala--For all its seemingly convincing ubiquity and organisational power, there’s something perceptively phoney about the National Resistance Movement, NRM: an aura of some inexplicable oddity that the party just seems unable to shake off.
Yes, exteriorly, the NRM, currently in power, makes an impression of strength, institutional order and focus, observers say. But for any ruling party, it’s pretty easy to project that impression and NRM’s overwhelming presence might be of little help to anyone trying to weight its real worth. In fact its real test will come when it faces the challenge of surviving the political demise of the founding chairman, Mr. Yoweri Museveni.
Although the NRM is young and has a lot to do to transform itself into a functioning, robust and sustainable entity there’s little that has been achieved in the way of building the party’s internal capacity. There are so many basics that have eluded it thus far that make political observers fret about its ability to survive a change of government in Uganda.
All through the past elections and other party activities, the NRM has counted on Mr Museveni to mobilise all the requisite funds and there has not been any discernible effort on the part of the party leadership to develop lasting and institutionalised mechanisms of generating money to fund its spending needs. Plans to acquire some properties that could in future fund the organisation have badly foundered for the party’s lifetime to date and there isn’t any sign the party’s troubled finances might improve in the foreseeable future, foreshadowing a dark time when its current fundraiser-in-chief exits.
An August 27th analysis last year in Daily Monitor of the NRM’s ailments serves as a microcosm of the terrible fate that might strike this party in a post-Museveni Uganda. The story for instance quoted a source who claimed that the NRM’s landlord had threatened to eject it from its headquarters on No. 10 Kyadodo Road, after it had piled up rent arrears and repeatedly ratted on its promise to clear them—a deeply mortifying episode for a party projected by its Chairman as formidable. It doesn’t help matters that its equally financially struggling (but humbler) rival, FDC can afford its rent.
In fact the threat on the Headquarters was emblematic of a broader crisis, with nearly all of NRM’s district offices reportedly abandoned by broke officials or evicted for failure to pay rent. Several party officials who spoke anonymously in that story voiced intense frustration that Mr Museveni was personally influencing the activities, direction and policy of the party from his base at State House, circumventing all the party executives and organs.
It is these perpetual financial woes, unilateral decision making by the party chairman and unremitting internal turmoil that makes the NRM increasingly look fated to fade with the exit of President Museveni.
To the ex legislator, Mr Agrey Awori the NRM edifice is evidently tenuous, but it still “could survive the political demise of Mr Museveni depending on whether he grooms strong personalities.”
If that were to be the case though, Mr Museveni would have to radically shift his style of leadership and management of the party affairs so that institutional structures are allowed to function unhindered and charismatic party members offered an opportunity to shine. However, apparently there’s no sign Museveni is changing his style of governing the party and, instead, all telltales point to a hardening of his strong-man leadership approach and a weakening of NRM’s formal organs.
Mr Awori for example bemoaned the virtual isolation of the party vice chairman, Mr Al Haji Moses Kigongo and portrayed it as signalling a troubling trend.
A recent NRM convert, Mr Awori, too, said the escalating factionalism and nasty ego clashes amongst the party stalwarts was “unhealthy” and that “mafia allegations” could deal the party a deadly blow in the event of change of government. Another source within the NRM, suggested there was effectively no one running the party now since, “Museveni is busy with the presidency, Mbabazi (Party Secretary General) with political intelligence and Kigongo marginalised.”
A few party members are placing hope in half a dozen or so young NRM leaders who have recently shown a measure of circumspection and broad appeal to inspire genuine change in the party.
In December 2006, four zealous young NRM MPs: Frank Tumwebaze, Margaret Muhanga, David Bahati and Mr. Chris Baryomunsi, co-authored a paper that assailed Mr Museveni for failing to acknowledge the factors eroding his support, culminating in his all-time low 59% vote in the February 2006 presidential elections.
It was the first time NRM members without any influence or power, had directly criticised Mr Museveni who had hitherto enjoyed a de facto sacred cow status in the party. While immediately not of any profound significance, that incident was noted by analysts as capable of inspiring future determination on the part of other members who may feel dissatisfied by Mr Museveni’s uncompromising leadership to directly engage him.
In an interview, Mr. Baryomunsi stated that the NRM was currently “struggling very hard” to decouple the NRM from its chairman, Mr Museveni and also accepted it as imperative for the party to outgrow the culture of “historicals.” Still, for all the mounting crises undermining the NRM’s integrity, Baryomunsi believes it can float on in a Post-Museveni Uganda. The key, he asserted, will be “how we exercise internal democracy and elect leaders.”
THE history of political parties and their fortunes after their leaders have left power in Uganda appears to particularly bode ill for the NRM. By any comparison, the NRM has arguably not reached even half the might, mass appeal and financial capacity of two of the historical parties: Obote-founded Uganda Peoples Congress and the Democratic Party, DP at the peak of their power. And yet, over the last 20 years those parties have helplessly declined to sad relics of their past selves.
With its administrative structures particularly at the district and lower levels tenuous or non-existent, perpetually empty coffers, continuous wrangling in senior party ranks and rising dispassion in the party’s rank and file, an intransigent party chairman: the NRM organisation might as well write its epilogue soonest after Museveni’s end.
Friday, June 6, 2008
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Common Denominator in Mr. Museveni’s Industrialisation Rhetoric.
ELIAS BIRYABAREMA
KAMPALA--President Museveni and a shrinking brigade of his die-hard loyalists within the NRM routinely harp about industrialising Uganda—something so basic a primary pupil would discuss it with an effort no more than he needs to lick candy—as though the subject were esoteric.
In fact, Museveni pursues his industrialisation crusades with such fervour it’s as if he invented the concept, fooling many into believing that he has an honest interest into expanding Uganda’s manufacturing capacity and thrusting the country into a modern age.
And yet Museveni and his NRM’s rants about building Uganda’s industrial capacity are mere gimmickry contrived to con Ugandans into swallowing assertions that the administration is spending our taxpayer money to transform the country when actually they are busying themselves with primitive accumulation evident in the mounting corruption epidemic.
One stark example— the infamous Tri-Star Apparels firm—bares the deception of Mr Museveni and his NRM’s proclamations on industrialisation and the immense harm they have done to this country under a clever guise of transforming it.
If there was any generous chance for this administration to demonstrate its commitment to uplifting this country, it was the African Growth and Opportunity Act, Agoa, the law enacted by the US Congress in early 2000 to let impoverished African nations like Uganda export, unencumbered by quotas and tariffs, cheap goods to the US market.
There are dozens of goods eligible for export under Agoa, but there’s only one area where Uganda had a breathtaking advantage—organic cotton production—and the country, if well led, should have become a mass producer of nice garments for both the US domestic markets. But a sadistic government, the NRM, would not let us be what we wanna be (to borrow a phrase from the American rapper, Nas’ song: I Can) and instead seized what was a profound, historic opportunity and turned it into what FDC’s Dr. Col. (rdt) Kizza Besigye famously described as a “costly fiasco.”
Before we could brink, instead of the thousands of jobs and millions of precious dollars in export earnings we had been promised by Mr Museveni while haranguing us to embrace Agoa: Shs 24 billion of scarce taxes had been made to disappear through a corrupt nexus, whose public face was a Sri Lankan shark, Mr Vellupilai Kananathan but whose masterminds appeared stationed around Nakasero.
These days whenever Mr Museveni is challenged about his reckless destruction of this nation through displacement of public institutions to give the land to his purported investors, he berates us for not appreciating the need for industrialisation and, well, lacking vision.
But the Tri-star Apparel swindle showed the nation what in fact Mr. Museveni has in mind when he speaks of industrialisation—a pipeline to siphon off the nation’s taxes by those that have a “vision.” This is what we should always have in mind whenever Mr Museveni takes to the podium and launches into his lectures on boosting Uganda’s industrial capacity.
And when we grasp this important connection between the numerous industrialisation/modernisation projects (Tri Star, Mabira giveaway, former UTV land, Shimoni land, Kalangala forests for oil palms etc) and the endless loop of loss to the taxpayer, it will become easy for us to comprehend some of the most bizarre acts like the looming despoliation of the source of River Nile.
Uganda’s Founding Father, ex President Dr. Milton Obote once arrived at an accurate characterisation of Mr Museveni (as a violent man) by rooting for a constant factor in all of the wars where Museveni has been involved. He observed that the theatres and times of those wars had been varied as had been the causes and several other aspects. Only two elements remained strikingly constant: Mr Museveni and the atrocities against non-combatants.
That’s a helpful clue to understanding today’s Mr Museveni and his supposed efforts to expand industrial production in Uganda. Over the time he has been pressing this cause: the projects, years, investors involved, sectors etc, have been different. Only two elements that have not varied whatsoever throughout: Mr Museveni and the loop of loss to the taxpayer.
There’s no gainsaying that Uganda needs industries. We need to create formal jobs for the hordes of youth streaming out of universities. We need to expand our technological capacity. these are no small tasks and if there were any Asian, Arab, European, American or any person of any race or from any region willing to come and lend a hand in efforts to realise these achievements, that person deserves maximum goodwill and support from us citizens and our government.
Nevertheless, when Mr Museveni and his NRM start to switch public land from this use to that and lavish incentives to investors: it is time to start worrying by any one who knows those two common denominators in this administration’s industrialisation effort
KAMPALA--President Museveni and a shrinking brigade of his die-hard loyalists within the NRM routinely harp about industrialising Uganda—something so basic a primary pupil would discuss it with an effort no more than he needs to lick candy—as though the subject were esoteric.
In fact, Museveni pursues his industrialisation crusades with such fervour it’s as if he invented the concept, fooling many into believing that he has an honest interest into expanding Uganda’s manufacturing capacity and thrusting the country into a modern age.
And yet Museveni and his NRM’s rants about building Uganda’s industrial capacity are mere gimmickry contrived to con Ugandans into swallowing assertions that the administration is spending our taxpayer money to transform the country when actually they are busying themselves with primitive accumulation evident in the mounting corruption epidemic.
One stark example— the infamous Tri-Star Apparels firm—bares the deception of Mr Museveni and his NRM’s proclamations on industrialisation and the immense harm they have done to this country under a clever guise of transforming it.
If there was any generous chance for this administration to demonstrate its commitment to uplifting this country, it was the African Growth and Opportunity Act, Agoa, the law enacted by the US Congress in early 2000 to let impoverished African nations like Uganda export, unencumbered by quotas and tariffs, cheap goods to the US market.
There are dozens of goods eligible for export under Agoa, but there’s only one area where Uganda had a breathtaking advantage—organic cotton production—and the country, if well led, should have become a mass producer of nice garments for both the US domestic markets. But a sadistic government, the NRM, would not let us be what we wanna be (to borrow a phrase from the American rapper, Nas’ song: I Can) and instead seized what was a profound, historic opportunity and turned it into what FDC’s Dr. Col. (rdt) Kizza Besigye famously described as a “costly fiasco.”
Before we could brink, instead of the thousands of jobs and millions of precious dollars in export earnings we had been promised by Mr Museveni while haranguing us to embrace Agoa: Shs 24 billion of scarce taxes had been made to disappear through a corrupt nexus, whose public face was a Sri Lankan shark, Mr Vellupilai Kananathan but whose masterminds appeared stationed around Nakasero.
These days whenever Mr Museveni is challenged about his reckless destruction of this nation through displacement of public institutions to give the land to his purported investors, he berates us for not appreciating the need for industrialisation and, well, lacking vision.
But the Tri-star Apparel swindle showed the nation what in fact Mr. Museveni has in mind when he speaks of industrialisation—a pipeline to siphon off the nation’s taxes by those that have a “vision.” This is what we should always have in mind whenever Mr Museveni takes to the podium and launches into his lectures on boosting Uganda’s industrial capacity.
And when we grasp this important connection between the numerous industrialisation/modernisation projects (Tri Star, Mabira giveaway, former UTV land, Shimoni land, Kalangala forests for oil palms etc) and the endless loop of loss to the taxpayer, it will become easy for us to comprehend some of the most bizarre acts like the looming despoliation of the source of River Nile.
Uganda’s Founding Father, ex President Dr. Milton Obote once arrived at an accurate characterisation of Mr Museveni (as a violent man) by rooting for a constant factor in all of the wars where Museveni has been involved. He observed that the theatres and times of those wars had been varied as had been the causes and several other aspects. Only two elements remained strikingly constant: Mr Museveni and the atrocities against non-combatants.
That’s a helpful clue to understanding today’s Mr Museveni and his supposed efforts to expand industrial production in Uganda. Over the time he has been pressing this cause: the projects, years, investors involved, sectors etc, have been different. Only two elements that have not varied whatsoever throughout: Mr Museveni and the loop of loss to the taxpayer.
There’s no gainsaying that Uganda needs industries. We need to create formal jobs for the hordes of youth streaming out of universities. We need to expand our technological capacity. these are no small tasks and if there were any Asian, Arab, European, American or any person of any race or from any region willing to come and lend a hand in efforts to realise these achievements, that person deserves maximum goodwill and support from us citizens and our government.
Nevertheless, when Mr Museveni and his NRM start to switch public land from this use to that and lavish incentives to investors: it is time to start worrying by any one who knows those two common denominators in this administration’s industrialisation effort
Friday, April 25, 2008
Global Food Crisis and President Museveni's Populist View
ELIAS BIRYABAREMA
KAMPALA--Just about every body round here and across the globe agrees the escalating food prices are fomenting a new world pandemic, that will unsettle societies and spawn desperation and death.
As it appears, the logic is pretty simple: costly food will increasingly slip out of the reach of millions of poor folks already struggling to survive daily. Mass starvation will consume millions. And as the civil unrest erupting in several countries has demonstrated, the consequences of this spreading hunger can be far reaching.
Only one man is smiling through all this global food melancholy—President Yoweri Museveni.
Always a contrarian, his supposedly unfailing wisdom ahead of everybody’s, Mr Museveni was reported on NTV’s Tonight news programme recently claiming that far from being saddened, he was revelling in the runaway food prices. For once, he said, his peasants, long tormented by bottom earnings from their produce, were going to get rich.
Glibly, his political assistant, Mr Moses Byaruhanga chorused the same assertion. It is hard to understand why Mr Museveni should be making such an embarrassingly populist claim.
True, Uganda produces a number of foods—beef, rice, sugar, corn (maize) etc— whose world supplies are running critically low and it is easy to construct a simplistic argument that the rise in the prices of these foods is good for Uganda.
But that would be farcical.
Although accurate figures are hard to find, Uganda is believed to be a net food importer and any steep upswing in the cost of food will easily deteriorate our trade deficit, and potentially rattle the larger economy. Uganda’s agriculture is nearly all of it subsistence, and there’s little the country’s peasants—barely able to feed themselves even in the best of times, to say nothing of exporting—can benefit from the soaring world food prices.
Yes, a peasant here and there, with extended acreage under cultivation, will rake in a few extra shillings but that’s a blip compared to the deadly hunger that could grip urbanites and the mass starvation awaiting the millions in North and Eastern Uganda that rely on relief food daily if the rocketing prices are not curbed.
In fact, even if these prices go on to engender a crisis in Kampala and other urban centres, a large section of the peasant families, who daily scrimp by on remittances from their richer, urban-dwelling relatives, will get sucked up in the pandemic as those relatives spend all they earn on the costly food. A great deal of the food consumed across Uganda is imported: wheat, corn, rice, cooking oil etc. I can’t seem to see any obvious winners in this food price scourge—it’s all a lose-lose situation.
In fact, more than any other leader, President Museveni should worry: 1.6million of his citizens, trapped in displacement camps in North and North East Uganda, are fed by WFP, mostly on imported food—corn, cooking oil, wheat flour etc. As the prices rise, WFP’s budget will only be able to purchase lesser and lesser food and the rations are already being cut as the body’s donors are unwilling or slow in responding to appeals for more generosity. And even if WFP were purchasing the food from Uganda, the supply scarcities would still spark immense suffering despite a windfall for the middlemen and may be some peasants. Diluted by the price hikes, the WFP’s budget would only cover a fraction of its normal food purchase levels, meaning hunger in the bellies of millions in Uganda whose mouths it caters.
And that’s before we even start to think of the dreadful consequences of starvation in Kampala and other municipalities across the country. Already unable to cope with the ever increasing hordes of poor, sudden starvation would stir nothing short of upheaval, a crisis the NRM can hardly handle. Gloomily, too, the NRM, never a government to plan for contingencies, runs the nation without strategic food reserves and so all it takes is a mere slight jolt to a normal food flow to plunge Uganda into a full-blown catastrophe. The ballooning food supply crisis could offer that jolt.
If Mr Museveni were right and food prices were good for peasant nations, West African countries, which like us have plenty of them, would not be erupting. And yet governments there have had to mass police forces on the streets to quell hunger-stoked explosions of violence.
So how, then, minding all the foregoing could Museveni start celebrating the global food price surge?
It’s a noxious blend of populist politics, mendacity and plain incompetence that have come to define the NRM lately. His predictions of bonanzas for peasants, false and absurd as they are, are easily believed by the NRM’s core constituency—the naïve rural masses. And obviously unprepared to absorb the impact a food crisis, the populist declarations of the supposed bonanza helps Mr Museveni sooth a fretful and agitated populace.
KAMPALA--Just about every body round here and across the globe agrees the escalating food prices are fomenting a new world pandemic, that will unsettle societies and spawn desperation and death.
As it appears, the logic is pretty simple: costly food will increasingly slip out of the reach of millions of poor folks already struggling to survive daily. Mass starvation will consume millions. And as the civil unrest erupting in several countries has demonstrated, the consequences of this spreading hunger can be far reaching.
Only one man is smiling through all this global food melancholy—President Yoweri Museveni.
Always a contrarian, his supposedly unfailing wisdom ahead of everybody’s, Mr Museveni was reported on NTV’s Tonight news programme recently claiming that far from being saddened, he was revelling in the runaway food prices. For once, he said, his peasants, long tormented by bottom earnings from their produce, were going to get rich.
Glibly, his political assistant, Mr Moses Byaruhanga chorused the same assertion. It is hard to understand why Mr Museveni should be making such an embarrassingly populist claim.
True, Uganda produces a number of foods—beef, rice, sugar, corn (maize) etc— whose world supplies are running critically low and it is easy to construct a simplistic argument that the rise in the prices of these foods is good for Uganda.
But that would be farcical.
Although accurate figures are hard to find, Uganda is believed to be a net food importer and any steep upswing in the cost of food will easily deteriorate our trade deficit, and potentially rattle the larger economy. Uganda’s agriculture is nearly all of it subsistence, and there’s little the country’s peasants—barely able to feed themselves even in the best of times, to say nothing of exporting—can benefit from the soaring world food prices.
Yes, a peasant here and there, with extended acreage under cultivation, will rake in a few extra shillings but that’s a blip compared to the deadly hunger that could grip urbanites and the mass starvation awaiting the millions in North and Eastern Uganda that rely on relief food daily if the rocketing prices are not curbed.
In fact, even if these prices go on to engender a crisis in Kampala and other urban centres, a large section of the peasant families, who daily scrimp by on remittances from their richer, urban-dwelling relatives, will get sucked up in the pandemic as those relatives spend all they earn on the costly food. A great deal of the food consumed across Uganda is imported: wheat, corn, rice, cooking oil etc. I can’t seem to see any obvious winners in this food price scourge—it’s all a lose-lose situation.
In fact, more than any other leader, President Museveni should worry: 1.6million of his citizens, trapped in displacement camps in North and North East Uganda, are fed by WFP, mostly on imported food—corn, cooking oil, wheat flour etc. As the prices rise, WFP’s budget will only be able to purchase lesser and lesser food and the rations are already being cut as the body’s donors are unwilling or slow in responding to appeals for more generosity. And even if WFP were purchasing the food from Uganda, the supply scarcities would still spark immense suffering despite a windfall for the middlemen and may be some peasants. Diluted by the price hikes, the WFP’s budget would only cover a fraction of its normal food purchase levels, meaning hunger in the bellies of millions in Uganda whose mouths it caters.
And that’s before we even start to think of the dreadful consequences of starvation in Kampala and other municipalities across the country. Already unable to cope with the ever increasing hordes of poor, sudden starvation would stir nothing short of upheaval, a crisis the NRM can hardly handle. Gloomily, too, the NRM, never a government to plan for contingencies, runs the nation without strategic food reserves and so all it takes is a mere slight jolt to a normal food flow to plunge Uganda into a full-blown catastrophe. The ballooning food supply crisis could offer that jolt.
If Mr Museveni were right and food prices were good for peasant nations, West African countries, which like us have plenty of them, would not be erupting. And yet governments there have had to mass police forces on the streets to quell hunger-stoked explosions of violence.
So how, then, minding all the foregoing could Museveni start celebrating the global food price surge?
It’s a noxious blend of populist politics, mendacity and plain incompetence that have come to define the NRM lately. His predictions of bonanzas for peasants, false and absurd as they are, are easily believed by the NRM’s core constituency—the naïve rural masses. And obviously unprepared to absorb the impact a food crisis, the populist declarations of the supposed bonanza helps Mr Museveni sooth a fretful and agitated populace.
Strange Encounter: Clean African City!
Kigali, April 13—few experiences are as refreshing as meeting a Sub-Saharan African city or town that comes close to typifying what a city should be.
Kigali is that.
From the grassy, beautifully manicured medians to the unfailing traffic lights, to the smooth road network to the absolute civil order across the city, Kigali brings profound warmth to the heart.
A tiny city of little commerce, a thin population and an unremarkable skyline, Kigali makes up for all that stunning lack of sophistication with its breathtaking neatness, civil discipline and administrative efficiency.
If to visit down-town Kampala is to be in hell and back, a visit to Kigali is a visit to Heaven.
The contrast is stark as that! That Rwanda, a tiny, extraordinarily poor nation that’s still eclipsed by its genocidal horrors, can marshal its minute efforts and construct an organised and sensible city and all Uganda’s NRM can do—with the vast resources at its disposal—is manage a garbage-strewn, flood-swathed Kampala is one of the most numbing paradoxes of our time.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Bank of Uganda: Violated Under Museveni, Its Future is Troubling.
ELIAS BIRYABAREMA
Kampala--In November 2006, the FDC leader, Col. (rtd) Dr Kiiza Besigye made public stunning Bank of Uganda, BoU, confidential documents he had obtained exclusively; revealing for the first time, according to Besigye, President Yoweri Museveni directly violating laws that shield BoU from political influence.
The documents that involved several internal BoU and Finance ministry correspondences and a letter by Mr Museveni showed how he personally directed the BoU Governor, Mr Tumusiime Mutebile to use money meant for servicing a European Investment Bank, EIB, development loan to salvage a collapsing company belonging to a crony, Mr Hassan Basajja Balaba.
Basjja Balaba Hides and Skins, the company in question, was threatened with foreclosure by its creditor Standard Chartered Bank and the BoU, under Mr Museveni’s pressure, used money from the so called Apex Reflows Account which was part of the Consolidated Fund to pay the company’s Shs 20 billion loan.
This revelation was extraordinary in many ways but most importantly it offered the public a surprising window into the storied and befogged edifice that is BoU. At once it revealed a troubling vulnerability to politics that many people had never thought of, trusting as they did in the robust constitutional protection against executive interference in the Central Bank’s performance of its obligations.
That naivety might seem excusable. Exteriorly BoU has for long projected an image that innocently resembled what in fact the institution should be —a Central Bank acting independently to manage the country’s financial system and microeconomic stability. There was scarcely any hint the Bank had become deeply enmeshed in Mr Museveni’s far-reaching web of political patronage and Besigye’s astonishing disclosures led many to take in some heavy breath, unable to comprehend what they were reading.
And yet the Basajja scandal, even with its record-setting scale, seemed to be the tip of the iceberg—a fact that was underscored by FDC’s call for an inquiry into the (mis)management of the Consolidated Fund for the last ten years. And as if to affirm the urgency of FDC’s call, as the full length of the Basajja swindle was still unfolding, it was also coming to light that BoU had also lost over Shs 24 billion in politically-influenced loan guarantees to a bogus Sri Lankan textiles investor, Mr Velupillai Kananathan of Tri-Star Apparels.
While BoU is supposed to operate independently, behind-the-scenes president Museveni has pulled the levers, with its working bearing his imprint in ways far more extensive that most people realise or may ever believe. Getting his wishes implemented by BoU has been particularly easy, in a large part due to what you may call “friendly forces.”
It’s worth noting that the director of BoU’s Development Finance Department, which was administering the Apex Reflows money was Naomi Nasasira—wife of Eng. John Nasasira. Mr Nasasira is Mr Museveni’s Minister for Works and Transport and one of his fierce loyalists and longest-serving cabinet members.
And this hidden but strong relationship between the Central Bank and President Museveni, which is setting odious precedents, will deeply impact on this institution’s future functioning and partly determine how Mr Museveni’s successor government might relate to it.
Will BoU be able to recapture its diminished integrity in a post-Museveni Uganda? Can it regain its constitutional autonomy and execute its mandate free from the corrupting influence of the executive? If Uganda’s political actors and general population is disgusted with Mr Museveni and his thieving NRM regime and is looking forward to a hopeful post-Museveni Uganda: these will be some of the questions that will have to be pondered, particularly in the wider and vital debate of ideas on how to rejuvenate and clean up key state institutions.
BoU’s spending of the money that was subsequently lost to Basajja and Tri Star was as reckless as it was illegal. Parliament and the Auditor General, two authorities supposed to monitor and authorise all drawings on the Consolidated Fund never sanctioned it.
A researcher at Makerere University-based Economic Policy Research Centre, Mr Lawrence Bategeka reasoned that while Mr Museveni has not been exemplary in guarding BoU’s independence, neither has he sought to ride roughshod over it.
“I can’t see any single incident when Mr Museveni has flagrantly violated the independence of the Central Bank,” he said. Even when he has intervened, Mr Bategeka said, it has been largely to use it to influence the course of the nation’s economic policy when he thought it had derailed.
Central Banks for instance, according to Mr Bategeka, have long expanded their role from their traditional focus on the narrow aspects of financial regulation, interest rates and inflation to wider areas like spurring economic growth and development. That shift has meant that BoU’s can intervene actively to for instance stimulate the economy to create more jobs or buoy up distressed firms, something that may justify Mr Museveni’s influence of BoU and its spending of taxpayer money.
Such reasoning however would overlook troubling details. True, it might appear reasonable for Mr Museveni to use BoU to intervene in stabilising macroeconomic issues but not when he’s doing it illegally.
Secondly, even as it is being cast as benign, Mr Museveni’s breach of the independence of BoU might entice him (if it hasn’t already) into using the Central Bank to execute politically populist and imprudent economic programmes. Such a legacy might get entrenched by a future leader with disastrous consequences for the reputation of the Central Bank and the wider economy.
Deputy Secretary to Treasury, Mr Keith Muhakanizi argued in an interview that Mr Museveni actually is empowered by the constitution to act the way he did in the Basajja and Tri-Star disasters, describing his directives to BoU as “a policy matter.”
He, too, was cold to suggestions of Museveni’s interference with BoU, noting that if there had been any mismanagement of the Consolidated Fund, it was caused by bureaucrats acting on their own. “The problem is that when these people (public servants) fail or are caught in the wrong then they want to shift responsibility,” he said.
The letters from Mr Museveni to the Governor of BoU that Mr Besigye exposed though hardly corroborates Mr Muhakanizi’s assertions.
To be sure, Mr Museveni’s irregular dealings with the Central Bank have not been epidemic and they do not seem to be out of the bounds of aberrations that Ugandans have come to expect from the NRM administration. Nevertheless, if BoU doesn’t fight to retrieve its slipping independence, it could easily succumb to worse manipulation in a post-Museveni Uganda, foreshadowing disaster for the economy.
Kampala--In November 2006, the FDC leader, Col. (rtd) Dr Kiiza Besigye made public stunning Bank of Uganda, BoU, confidential documents he had obtained exclusively; revealing for the first time, according to Besigye, President Yoweri Museveni directly violating laws that shield BoU from political influence.
The documents that involved several internal BoU and Finance ministry correspondences and a letter by Mr Museveni showed how he personally directed the BoU Governor, Mr Tumusiime Mutebile to use money meant for servicing a European Investment Bank, EIB, development loan to salvage a collapsing company belonging to a crony, Mr Hassan Basajja Balaba.
Basjja Balaba Hides and Skins, the company in question, was threatened with foreclosure by its creditor Standard Chartered Bank and the BoU, under Mr Museveni’s pressure, used money from the so called Apex Reflows Account which was part of the Consolidated Fund to pay the company’s Shs 20 billion loan.
This revelation was extraordinary in many ways but most importantly it offered the public a surprising window into the storied and befogged edifice that is BoU. At once it revealed a troubling vulnerability to politics that many people had never thought of, trusting as they did in the robust constitutional protection against executive interference in the Central Bank’s performance of its obligations.
That naivety might seem excusable. Exteriorly BoU has for long projected an image that innocently resembled what in fact the institution should be —a Central Bank acting independently to manage the country’s financial system and microeconomic stability. There was scarcely any hint the Bank had become deeply enmeshed in Mr Museveni’s far-reaching web of political patronage and Besigye’s astonishing disclosures led many to take in some heavy breath, unable to comprehend what they were reading.
And yet the Basajja scandal, even with its record-setting scale, seemed to be the tip of the iceberg—a fact that was underscored by FDC’s call for an inquiry into the (mis)management of the Consolidated Fund for the last ten years. And as if to affirm the urgency of FDC’s call, as the full length of the Basajja swindle was still unfolding, it was also coming to light that BoU had also lost over Shs 24 billion in politically-influenced loan guarantees to a bogus Sri Lankan textiles investor, Mr Velupillai Kananathan of Tri-Star Apparels.
While BoU is supposed to operate independently, behind-the-scenes president Museveni has pulled the levers, with its working bearing his imprint in ways far more extensive that most people realise or may ever believe. Getting his wishes implemented by BoU has been particularly easy, in a large part due to what you may call “friendly forces.”
It’s worth noting that the director of BoU’s Development Finance Department, which was administering the Apex Reflows money was Naomi Nasasira—wife of Eng. John Nasasira. Mr Nasasira is Mr Museveni’s Minister for Works and Transport and one of his fierce loyalists and longest-serving cabinet members.
And this hidden but strong relationship between the Central Bank and President Museveni, which is setting odious precedents, will deeply impact on this institution’s future functioning and partly determine how Mr Museveni’s successor government might relate to it.
Will BoU be able to recapture its diminished integrity in a post-Museveni Uganda? Can it regain its constitutional autonomy and execute its mandate free from the corrupting influence of the executive? If Uganda’s political actors and general population is disgusted with Mr Museveni and his thieving NRM regime and is looking forward to a hopeful post-Museveni Uganda: these will be some of the questions that will have to be pondered, particularly in the wider and vital debate of ideas on how to rejuvenate and clean up key state institutions.
BoU’s spending of the money that was subsequently lost to Basajja and Tri Star was as reckless as it was illegal. Parliament and the Auditor General, two authorities supposed to monitor and authorise all drawings on the Consolidated Fund never sanctioned it.
A researcher at Makerere University-based Economic Policy Research Centre, Mr Lawrence Bategeka reasoned that while Mr Museveni has not been exemplary in guarding BoU’s independence, neither has he sought to ride roughshod over it.
“I can’t see any single incident when Mr Museveni has flagrantly violated the independence of the Central Bank,” he said. Even when he has intervened, Mr Bategeka said, it has been largely to use it to influence the course of the nation’s economic policy when he thought it had derailed.
Central Banks for instance, according to Mr Bategeka, have long expanded their role from their traditional focus on the narrow aspects of financial regulation, interest rates and inflation to wider areas like spurring economic growth and development. That shift has meant that BoU’s can intervene actively to for instance stimulate the economy to create more jobs or buoy up distressed firms, something that may justify Mr Museveni’s influence of BoU and its spending of taxpayer money.
Such reasoning however would overlook troubling details. True, it might appear reasonable for Mr Museveni to use BoU to intervene in stabilising macroeconomic issues but not when he’s doing it illegally.
Secondly, even as it is being cast as benign, Mr Museveni’s breach of the independence of BoU might entice him (if it hasn’t already) into using the Central Bank to execute politically populist and imprudent economic programmes. Such a legacy might get entrenched by a future leader with disastrous consequences for the reputation of the Central Bank and the wider economy.
Deputy Secretary to Treasury, Mr Keith Muhakanizi argued in an interview that Mr Museveni actually is empowered by the constitution to act the way he did in the Basajja and Tri-Star disasters, describing his directives to BoU as “a policy matter.”
He, too, was cold to suggestions of Museveni’s interference with BoU, noting that if there had been any mismanagement of the Consolidated Fund, it was caused by bureaucrats acting on their own. “The problem is that when these people (public servants) fail or are caught in the wrong then they want to shift responsibility,” he said.
The letters from Mr Museveni to the Governor of BoU that Mr Besigye exposed though hardly corroborates Mr Muhakanizi’s assertions.
To be sure, Mr Museveni’s irregular dealings with the Central Bank have not been epidemic and they do not seem to be out of the bounds of aberrations that Ugandans have come to expect from the NRM administration. Nevertheless, if BoU doesn’t fight to retrieve its slipping independence, it could easily succumb to worse manipulation in a post-Museveni Uganda, foreshadowing disaster for the economy.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
UPDF in a Post-Museveni Uganda: Hints of Hope and Upheaval.
ELIAS BIRYABAREMA
Kampala--From its founding in 1981, through the guerrilla battles to the seizure of power in ’86, transformation into a national army and then on to the current multiparty politics, the UPDF (formerly, NRA) has been run as a de facto personal army of President Yoweri Museveni.
Mr Museveni’s influence within the UPDF is so pervasive and overweening—or so he has made people believe—that most Ugandans have long understood it as nearly impossible for this institution to stand without him. And so there is a considerable measure of wonder and apprehension about the sort and extent of change, if any, that will sweep through the UPDF in a post-Museveni Uganda.
While it is true that the army has long shed some of its historical ties to Mr. Museveni and assumed a national character and visage, it still maintains lots of cultish loyalty and reverence for its founder and a great deal of the army command structures and functioning appear to spin around his personal authority that its unclear how that institution’s integrity will continue when its supposed centre of gravity (Mr Museveni) erodes.
In Ex Army Commander, Major Gen Mugisha Muntu’s prognosis, the UPDF can survive Mr Museveni’s political demise and grow even stronger but that that will depend on the evolving character of the force and factors influencing its internal growth and transformation.
There’s a growing cadreship of elite officers (highly educated, trained and modernist in outlook), Muntu observed, that is increasingly gravitating toward independent thinking and action and that if the future of UPDF is shaped by these officers then worries of an institutional breakdown after Museveni would be wanton. “Yes, they’re all these educated and inspiring officers in our military that are upcoming,” he said. “I think they represent the hope and continuity of our army.”
Encouragingly, too, the elongated stability of Uganda’s politics and the growing strength of some of the country’s democratic institutions and the spread of civil liberties—parliament, opposition parties, the media, civil society—is also cited by analysts to be quietly shaping the mindsets and general character of these officers. Increasingly a growing section within the military leadership, according to a source in the intelligence community, is inevitably realising that the army has little choice but to defend these young institutions and this epiphany will ultimately determine how the military behaves upon the exit of the founding Commander-in-Chief.
Be that as it may, plenty of hints here and there do not seem to point to a reassuring future. Another source within Mr. Museveni’s intelligence circle lamented the president’s persistent use of the army in his personal political manoeuvres, noting that the practise has now become so entrenched that it will take a long time to reverse.
In all the elections Uganda has had for instance under Mr Museveni—1996, 2001, 2006—the army has inserted itself (or has been inserted) right at the centre, with several senior raking officers actively conducting covert campaigns for President Museveni. The current coordinator of Intelligence Services, Mr David Tinyefuza and Maj. Gen Elly Tumwine overtly campaigned for President Museveni in 2001 and issued dreadful threats against his key opponent Col. Dr Kiiza Besigye. The same was reprised in 2006 elections.
For the UPDF to fully professionalize and gain sufficient national goodwill and support, so crucial for its continuity, it will have to unlearn a great deal of the anti-democracy lessons imparted by Mr Museveni and his strongman style of politics. That won’t be easy considering that most of the generals, supposed to re-orient and sanitise the UPDF are the same officers who have been harassing and brutalising political opposition members on behalf of president Museveni.
Their predicament is further complicated by the fact that their participation in Museveni’s machinations is itself done in self-interest since through maintaining Museveni’s dictatorship they perpetuate their own impunity.
There are decidedly less explored undercurrents that will nevertheless prove crucial in the future of UPDF. It has been politically incorrect for the media in Uganda to debate the longstanding accusations of tribal marginalisation in the military. Lately though, these incendiary accusations have been amplified anew by disaffected elements within the NRM. And official denials have appeared to inflame it further by inviting closer scrutiny of the tribal composition of the army. Mr Museveni’s perennial justification for the Bahima’s predominance in the army has been that they initially formed the nucleus of the NRA but after 22 years of little or no change, many are now dismissing this argument as a smokescreen for his sectarianism.
The pandemic of grand corruption in the army, one of Mr Museveni’s most hideous legacies will for long retard the growth of UPDF and there’s expected little change when he leaves power. The embezzlement of vast sums of money in payments of phantom troops, procurement of arms and even diversion of salaries for real soldiers have resulted in the perpetuation of critical capacity limitations. The consequences of this corruption have been colossally tragic as in the army’s failure to end the war in northern Uganda.
Few expect this state of affairs to change in a post-Museveni Uganda. But the cost of failure to end army corruption will probably be greater than what the nation has paid so far.
It could continue weakening the military up to a point where it’s vulnerable to upheaval and in a post-Museveni Uganda that point could come closer far faster than many can imagine.
Kampala--From its founding in 1981, through the guerrilla battles to the seizure of power in ’86, transformation into a national army and then on to the current multiparty politics, the UPDF (formerly, NRA) has been run as a de facto personal army of President Yoweri Museveni.
Mr Museveni’s influence within the UPDF is so pervasive and overweening—or so he has made people believe—that most Ugandans have long understood it as nearly impossible for this institution to stand without him. And so there is a considerable measure of wonder and apprehension about the sort and extent of change, if any, that will sweep through the UPDF in a post-Museveni Uganda.
While it is true that the army has long shed some of its historical ties to Mr. Museveni and assumed a national character and visage, it still maintains lots of cultish loyalty and reverence for its founder and a great deal of the army command structures and functioning appear to spin around his personal authority that its unclear how that institution’s integrity will continue when its supposed centre of gravity (Mr Museveni) erodes.
In Ex Army Commander, Major Gen Mugisha Muntu’s prognosis, the UPDF can survive Mr Museveni’s political demise and grow even stronger but that that will depend on the evolving character of the force and factors influencing its internal growth and transformation.
There’s a growing cadreship of elite officers (highly educated, trained and modernist in outlook), Muntu observed, that is increasingly gravitating toward independent thinking and action and that if the future of UPDF is shaped by these officers then worries of an institutional breakdown after Museveni would be wanton. “Yes, they’re all these educated and inspiring officers in our military that are upcoming,” he said. “I think they represent the hope and continuity of our army.”
Encouragingly, too, the elongated stability of Uganda’s politics and the growing strength of some of the country’s democratic institutions and the spread of civil liberties—parliament, opposition parties, the media, civil society—is also cited by analysts to be quietly shaping the mindsets and general character of these officers. Increasingly a growing section within the military leadership, according to a source in the intelligence community, is inevitably realising that the army has little choice but to defend these young institutions and this epiphany will ultimately determine how the military behaves upon the exit of the founding Commander-in-Chief.
Be that as it may, plenty of hints here and there do not seem to point to a reassuring future. Another source within Mr. Museveni’s intelligence circle lamented the president’s persistent use of the army in his personal political manoeuvres, noting that the practise has now become so entrenched that it will take a long time to reverse.
In all the elections Uganda has had for instance under Mr Museveni—1996, 2001, 2006—the army has inserted itself (or has been inserted) right at the centre, with several senior raking officers actively conducting covert campaigns for President Museveni. The current coordinator of Intelligence Services, Mr David Tinyefuza and Maj. Gen Elly Tumwine overtly campaigned for President Museveni in 2001 and issued dreadful threats against his key opponent Col. Dr Kiiza Besigye. The same was reprised in 2006 elections.
For the UPDF to fully professionalize and gain sufficient national goodwill and support, so crucial for its continuity, it will have to unlearn a great deal of the anti-democracy lessons imparted by Mr Museveni and his strongman style of politics. That won’t be easy considering that most of the generals, supposed to re-orient and sanitise the UPDF are the same officers who have been harassing and brutalising political opposition members on behalf of president Museveni.
Their predicament is further complicated by the fact that their participation in Museveni’s machinations is itself done in self-interest since through maintaining Museveni’s dictatorship they perpetuate their own impunity.
There are decidedly less explored undercurrents that will nevertheless prove crucial in the future of UPDF. It has been politically incorrect for the media in Uganda to debate the longstanding accusations of tribal marginalisation in the military. Lately though, these incendiary accusations have been amplified anew by disaffected elements within the NRM. And official denials have appeared to inflame it further by inviting closer scrutiny of the tribal composition of the army. Mr Museveni’s perennial justification for the Bahima’s predominance in the army has been that they initially formed the nucleus of the NRA but after 22 years of little or no change, many are now dismissing this argument as a smokescreen for his sectarianism.
The pandemic of grand corruption in the army, one of Mr Museveni’s most hideous legacies will for long retard the growth of UPDF and there’s expected little change when he leaves power. The embezzlement of vast sums of money in payments of phantom troops, procurement of arms and even diversion of salaries for real soldiers have resulted in the perpetuation of critical capacity limitations. The consequences of this corruption have been colossally tragic as in the army’s failure to end the war in northern Uganda.
Few expect this state of affairs to change in a post-Museveni Uganda. But the cost of failure to end army corruption will probably be greater than what the nation has paid so far.
It could continue weakening the military up to a point where it’s vulnerable to upheaval and in a post-Museveni Uganda that point could come closer far faster than many can imagine.
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Post-Museveni Parliament: A Legacy of the Power of Patronage
ELIAS BIRYABAREMA
In the 22 years that Mr. Yoweri Museveni has led Uganda, his has been largely an imperial presidency with his hand literally in every pie. Just about every important state institution has long gotten used to his frequent personal intervention which has come to influence the functioning (or malfunctioning) of these institutions. They have more or less been modelled in his image and there’s not much clarity and understanding on how these institutions might operate in case the person, on whom their very existence has revolved, exits power. In a new eight-part series I delve into some of the key institutions and government policies and show how they will change or not change in a Post-Museveni Uganda.
The First which runs today tackles Parliament.
**********
KAMPALA--For all the rhetorical bluster and bumble that occasionally issues from the “dissident” sections of members of parliament, the legislature under president Museveni’s 22-year administration, has largely been conformist and pliant all through.
Under the quaint individual-merit Movement system starting with the 6th Parliament in1996, there prevailed a presumption that the legislators had unencumbered latitude to pursue independent thinking and perform their work free from the corrupting influence of the executive. However, as Museveni’s regime entrenched itself in power and sought tighter control of all state institutions, the legislature was slowly pulled and enmeshed in the web of executive manoeuvres, which soon handed president Museveni powerful levers with which he controlled parliamentarians, their debates and their outcomes.
That relationship has been sustained by a convenient trade-off between the MPs (majority of them) who have allowed their minds to be stewarded by Museveni’s whims in return for a copious flow of endless patronage in form of money, plum appointments and, for some, guarantee of impunity. This symbiosis between Museveni and a large section of parliamentarians has produced one of the most twisted and duplicitous democracies in the region, with the parliament , the most paramount check on the executive, appearing robust and effective while it is in fact hopelessly hamstrung, busying itself with rubberstamping the president’s wild wishes and fantasies.
The climax to this strange pattern of behaviour was the brazen bribing of MPs in late 2005 to acquiesce in Museveni’s “life-presidency” ambition by deleting the two-term cap on incumbency in the constitution.
If there’s any noticeable legacy thus—regarding the respect and fostering of the role of parliament as a pillar of a strong and well governed state—that President Museveni’s administration will bequeath to the successive leader when he eventually quits power, it will be one of venality and political sleaze, according to Prof. Fredrick Ssempebwa. What Museveni has demonstrated, according to analysts, is how a leader can masterfully use money and privilege to sedate stubborn but economically vulnerable House members and this evolving political culture will characterise parliament for some time in future.
“What has been most outstanding in president Museveni’s relationship with Parliament is his broad use of manipulation and patronage to steer the latter to his political ends,” Ssempebwa said.
To be sure, just about every leader in the world uses patronage to extract loyalty and support for himself. But, according to observers, Mr Museveni’s form of patronage is highly personalised, inimical to development and politically polarising. Most other leaders spread their patronage amongst masses, for instance spending money on public works for which they turn around and claim political capital. “Obote for instance built the 22 hospitals which were in part used to re-energise his support across the areas where those hospitals were located,” commented one senior politician confidentially.
“So over and above his political goals, those hospitals served to improve health care for the masses. This is different Museveni type of patronage where he directly hands out cash to his loyalist MPs.”
Future leaders, according to Ssempebwa’s prognosis, have learned from Museveni how best to extend their overreaching power to parliament and prevent opposition elements from gaining wide support and presenting formidable obstacles to executive requests. There’s one particular technique that Museveni has long adeptly exploited to manoeuvre his way around parliamentary oversight—hosting and feting MPs at State House and his country home of Rwakitura.
It is now almost standard practise: a bill is facing mounting opposition in parliament; some Movement legislators are voicing discontent, a budget request is facing rejection by a House committee, a financial scandal is swirling in the House; the President will quickly invite respective MPs for “tea” at Nakasero or Rwakitura at the end of which MPs are seen to soften their stance on the matter in question or even switching positions altogether.
When Museveni desired a more luxurious (and costlier) presidential jet (G555), in December last year for instance he invited members on the Presidential and Foreign Affairs Committee to Nakasero and cajoled them into succumbing to his unpopular request even as it looked certain to provoke a groundswell of anger.
Still, Museveni prevailed at the end of the day in part because the parliamentary committee supposed to be the people’s first line of defence against executive excesses had yielded perhaps in the face of Museveni’s intimidating gaze at Naksero.
Ex legislator, Mr Nobert Mao summed up Mr Museveni’s manipulation of MPs, “he’s managing a multiparty parliament using movement software.” In a post Museveni Uganda he forecast a brutal backlash against legislators who displayed fierce loyalty to Museveni because, he said, future leaders will not want to be encumbered by the baggage of NRM’s past wrongs. “There will be a purge of loyalists and I think once Museveni departs, Uganda’s parliament won’t be dominated by the NRM,” he said.
Ultimately, the integrity of parliament which has vastly eroded under Museveni’s Movement and NRM administrations will depend on the personality of whichever leader succeeds the incumbent.
What is less in doubt though is that if that leader lifts a page from Museveni’s parliamentary playbook, there’s plenty that should worry Ugandans in trusting their legislators to guard their interests against executive sleaze and corruption.
In the 22 years that Mr. Yoweri Museveni has led Uganda, his has been largely an imperial presidency with his hand literally in every pie. Just about every important state institution has long gotten used to his frequent personal intervention which has come to influence the functioning (or malfunctioning) of these institutions. They have more or less been modelled in his image and there’s not much clarity and understanding on how these institutions might operate in case the person, on whom their very existence has revolved, exits power. In a new eight-part series I delve into some of the key institutions and government policies and show how they will change or not change in a Post-Museveni Uganda.
The First which runs today tackles Parliament.
**********
KAMPALA--For all the rhetorical bluster and bumble that occasionally issues from the “dissident” sections of members of parliament, the legislature under president Museveni’s 22-year administration, has largely been conformist and pliant all through.
Under the quaint individual-merit Movement system starting with the 6th Parliament in1996, there prevailed a presumption that the legislators had unencumbered latitude to pursue independent thinking and perform their work free from the corrupting influence of the executive. However, as Museveni’s regime entrenched itself in power and sought tighter control of all state institutions, the legislature was slowly pulled and enmeshed in the web of executive manoeuvres, which soon handed president Museveni powerful levers with which he controlled parliamentarians, their debates and their outcomes.
That relationship has been sustained by a convenient trade-off between the MPs (majority of them) who have allowed their minds to be stewarded by Museveni’s whims in return for a copious flow of endless patronage in form of money, plum appointments and, for some, guarantee of impunity. This symbiosis between Museveni and a large section of parliamentarians has produced one of the most twisted and duplicitous democracies in the region, with the parliament , the most paramount check on the executive, appearing robust and effective while it is in fact hopelessly hamstrung, busying itself with rubberstamping the president’s wild wishes and fantasies.
The climax to this strange pattern of behaviour was the brazen bribing of MPs in late 2005 to acquiesce in Museveni’s “life-presidency” ambition by deleting the two-term cap on incumbency in the constitution.
If there’s any noticeable legacy thus—regarding the respect and fostering of the role of parliament as a pillar of a strong and well governed state—that President Museveni’s administration will bequeath to the successive leader when he eventually quits power, it will be one of venality and political sleaze, according to Prof. Fredrick Ssempebwa. What Museveni has demonstrated, according to analysts, is how a leader can masterfully use money and privilege to sedate stubborn but economically vulnerable House members and this evolving political culture will characterise parliament for some time in future.
“What has been most outstanding in president Museveni’s relationship with Parliament is his broad use of manipulation and patronage to steer the latter to his political ends,” Ssempebwa said.
To be sure, just about every leader in the world uses patronage to extract loyalty and support for himself. But, according to observers, Mr Museveni’s form of patronage is highly personalised, inimical to development and politically polarising. Most other leaders spread their patronage amongst masses, for instance spending money on public works for which they turn around and claim political capital. “Obote for instance built the 22 hospitals which were in part used to re-energise his support across the areas where those hospitals were located,” commented one senior politician confidentially.
“So over and above his political goals, those hospitals served to improve health care for the masses. This is different Museveni type of patronage where he directly hands out cash to his loyalist MPs.”
Future leaders, according to Ssempebwa’s prognosis, have learned from Museveni how best to extend their overreaching power to parliament and prevent opposition elements from gaining wide support and presenting formidable obstacles to executive requests. There’s one particular technique that Museveni has long adeptly exploited to manoeuvre his way around parliamentary oversight—hosting and feting MPs at State House and his country home of Rwakitura.
It is now almost standard practise: a bill is facing mounting opposition in parliament; some Movement legislators are voicing discontent, a budget request is facing rejection by a House committee, a financial scandal is swirling in the House; the President will quickly invite respective MPs for “tea” at Nakasero or Rwakitura at the end of which MPs are seen to soften their stance on the matter in question or even switching positions altogether.
When Museveni desired a more luxurious (and costlier) presidential jet (G555), in December last year for instance he invited members on the Presidential and Foreign Affairs Committee to Nakasero and cajoled them into succumbing to his unpopular request even as it looked certain to provoke a groundswell of anger.
Still, Museveni prevailed at the end of the day in part because the parliamentary committee supposed to be the people’s first line of defence against executive excesses had yielded perhaps in the face of Museveni’s intimidating gaze at Naksero.
Ex legislator, Mr Nobert Mao summed up Mr Museveni’s manipulation of MPs, “he’s managing a multiparty parliament using movement software.” In a post Museveni Uganda he forecast a brutal backlash against legislators who displayed fierce loyalty to Museveni because, he said, future leaders will not want to be encumbered by the baggage of NRM’s past wrongs. “There will be a purge of loyalists and I think once Museveni departs, Uganda’s parliament won’t be dominated by the NRM,” he said.
Ultimately, the integrity of parliament which has vastly eroded under Museveni’s Movement and NRM administrations will depend on the personality of whichever leader succeeds the incumbent.
What is less in doubt though is that if that leader lifts a page from Museveni’s parliamentary playbook, there’s plenty that should worry Ugandans in trusting their legislators to guard their interests against executive sleaze and corruption.
Epidemics Return Uganda to its Truer Image
ELIAS BRYABAREMA
KAMPALA--When Uganda hosted the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, Chogm, the country was hardly mentioned in most of the American press, arguably the most influential section of the Western media.
The British media though did offer considerable coverage casting Uganda, momentarily, in global news pages, for better or worse. According to the government, the foremost justification for the colossal sums of money spent on organising Chogm2007 was because the event would present the country with something of once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to showcase its supposed bountiful potential to the world.
As to whether that happened during the weeklong Chogm meetings (November 19th-25th) remains unclear.
But if Chogm did indeed market brand Uganda to the world, then President Museveni and his NRM government might already be banging their heads on the walls asking why a cruel misfortune had to strike so soon, instantly wiping out all the gloss newly put on the nation’s face.
Just in a flash, by an act of Nature, Uganda has been lunged back to its standard sub-Saharan African default image: disease, pain and suffering. As November ebbed and sunk on the horizon, Uganda started to hit global headlines as the hemorrhagic fever Ebola tightened its horrific grip on the nation, four days after the end of Chogm2007.
On December 5th that catastrophe was added on weight with Daily Monitor reporting an additional quadruple outbreak of bubonic plague which struck West Nile, Cholera in Hoima and Yellow Fever in Kitgum.
Since then, nearly all the news churned out of Uganda by the global newswires (AFP, Reuters, Associated Press, Bloomberg, Xinhua etc) has been on the Ebola epidemic and little else somehow cementing the traditional world perception of Uganda as just about that of any other sub-Saharan African backwater: nations still susceptible to outbreaks of diseases even as simple as Cholera.
The devastating impact of the current Ebola strike on Uganda’s image is boldly noticeable in the American press which in the first place never bothered to report anything substantially positive about the country’s hosting of Chogm. New York Times reported, “Ebola Kills 19 Ugandans,” on 4th December. Similar stories run in several others major US newspapers.
This is particularly distressing considering that president Museveni has made countless trips to the US to court investors there, only for them to be inundated with the terrifying news of health epidemics trumpeted in their press.
Museveni’s Media Advisor, Mr. John Nagenda ridiculed any derivation of contrasts between Chogm and the Ebola epidemic. “It’s the mindless that can start drawing any links between Ebola and Chogm. This is a natural epidemic that can hit any country.” he said yesterday.
The government, he said, was scrambling to marshal resources and respond adequately so that the epidemics can be blunted as quickly as possible. He was empathic in dismissing the notion that any image mileage that Uganda could have wrung out of successful (some say) hosting of Chogm has already been eroded by the epidemic.
Nagenda could be right that epidemics are natural and that it would possibly be sadistic to start throwing mean arguments around them as cynics are wont to do (are already doing!). But again, as is well known, health catastrophes like cholera are now only a preserve of countries that are trapped in primordial living conditions like those in parts of Uganda and most of sub-Saharan Africa. And even Ebola, which would seem to have no connection with the level of economic development: all its past eruptions have been confined to sub-Saharan Africa; Sudan, Uganda, D. R. Congo and Angola—countries that share just about the same living conditions.
At the end Chogm Museveni, newly energised and soaring from the Chogm success addressed journalists delighting in the success of Chogm and the new global power it had rendered Uganda’s “Gifted by Nature” brand.
Now, the same Nature has, unsympathetic to Museveni, turned malevolent and put everything asunder and dragged the country back to its melancholic existence.
KAMPALA--When Uganda hosted the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, Chogm, the country was hardly mentioned in most of the American press, arguably the most influential section of the Western media.
The British media though did offer considerable coverage casting Uganda, momentarily, in global news pages, for better or worse. According to the government, the foremost justification for the colossal sums of money spent on organising Chogm2007 was because the event would present the country with something of once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to showcase its supposed bountiful potential to the world.
As to whether that happened during the weeklong Chogm meetings (November 19th-25th) remains unclear.
But if Chogm did indeed market brand Uganda to the world, then President Museveni and his NRM government might already be banging their heads on the walls asking why a cruel misfortune had to strike so soon, instantly wiping out all the gloss newly put on the nation’s face.
Just in a flash, by an act of Nature, Uganda has been lunged back to its standard sub-Saharan African default image: disease, pain and suffering. As November ebbed and sunk on the horizon, Uganda started to hit global headlines as the hemorrhagic fever Ebola tightened its horrific grip on the nation, four days after the end of Chogm2007.
On December 5th that catastrophe was added on weight with Daily Monitor reporting an additional quadruple outbreak of bubonic plague which struck West Nile, Cholera in Hoima and Yellow Fever in Kitgum.
Since then, nearly all the news churned out of Uganda by the global newswires (AFP, Reuters, Associated Press, Bloomberg, Xinhua etc) has been on the Ebola epidemic and little else somehow cementing the traditional world perception of Uganda as just about that of any other sub-Saharan African backwater: nations still susceptible to outbreaks of diseases even as simple as Cholera.
The devastating impact of the current Ebola strike on Uganda’s image is boldly noticeable in the American press which in the first place never bothered to report anything substantially positive about the country’s hosting of Chogm. New York Times reported, “Ebola Kills 19 Ugandans,” on 4th December. Similar stories run in several others major US newspapers.
This is particularly distressing considering that president Museveni has made countless trips to the US to court investors there, only for them to be inundated with the terrifying news of health epidemics trumpeted in their press.
Museveni’s Media Advisor, Mr. John Nagenda ridiculed any derivation of contrasts between Chogm and the Ebola epidemic. “It’s the mindless that can start drawing any links between Ebola and Chogm. This is a natural epidemic that can hit any country.” he said yesterday.
The government, he said, was scrambling to marshal resources and respond adequately so that the epidemics can be blunted as quickly as possible. He was empathic in dismissing the notion that any image mileage that Uganda could have wrung out of successful (some say) hosting of Chogm has already been eroded by the epidemic.
Nagenda could be right that epidemics are natural and that it would possibly be sadistic to start throwing mean arguments around them as cynics are wont to do (are already doing!). But again, as is well known, health catastrophes like cholera are now only a preserve of countries that are trapped in primordial living conditions like those in parts of Uganda and most of sub-Saharan Africa. And even Ebola, which would seem to have no connection with the level of economic development: all its past eruptions have been confined to sub-Saharan Africa; Sudan, Uganda, D. R. Congo and Angola—countries that share just about the same living conditions.
At the end Chogm Museveni, newly energised and soaring from the Chogm success addressed journalists delighting in the success of Chogm and the new global power it had rendered Uganda’s “Gifted by Nature” brand.
Now, the same Nature has, unsympathetic to Museveni, turned malevolent and put everything asunder and dragged the country back to its melancholic existence.
Monday, January 28, 2008
A successor from the palace. But who might that be?
On January 2, 2007 the Red Pepper reported that intelligence personnel were stuck with a report that showed that President Yoweri Museveni's wife, Janet Kataha Museveni intends to contest in the 2011 presidential elections.
Although that story appeared extra-ordinarily remarkable - for better or worse - it was never picked up by pundits in Kampala's energetic debate circuit and it soon slipped under the media radar and then off to the pages of history.
Noteworthy though was that, that report was never refuted by State House.
A few attuned commentators noted it and, in a review of the major news of the year, Daily Monitor writer Mr Timothy Kalyegira cited it as one of the key political news of 2007.
For the first time, a small window was opened for the public into the scale of the political ambitions of the second most powerful member of State House.
And even beyond that it also helped signal to Ugandans the sort of political fault-lines and the jockeying that could form in Uganda's innermost sanctum of power in case President Museveni ever becomes incapacitated in office or resigns.
Insiders in State House told Daily Monitor that President Museveni does not espouse Janet's involvement in politics.
When she announced, late in 2005, that she would compete for the Ruhama County MP seat, Mr Museveni was later quoted by the media as saying that he had tried to discourage his wife from engaging in elective politics.
When someone chooses to set aside the revered status of 'Mother of the Nation' and enter the muddy fields of elective and characteristically partisan politics, it cannot be for a small reason.
Then she explained that in standing, she was obeying a command from God. After gaining the experience of competitive constituency politics for five years, what is to stop God from commanding her to seek the bigger constituency called Uganda?
But since Museveni did not want her in politics, it can be deduced that he has other ideas in his head regarding which members of his circle should succeed him in case his health were to fail him.
In June 2006, while speaking at the launch of Vumilia, an association of soldiers' widows and orphans at Sheraton Hotel, Museveni dropped an eye-popping hint - First Son, Maj. Muhoozi Keinerugaba, he suggested, should start from where he finishes.
Mr Museveni was quoted by Daily Monitor as saying in Luganda, "Omwana yagenda okutwala mu maso omulimo gwa kitawe. Mutabani wange namuyita Muhoozi. Enkya, Muhoozi yagenda okuwolera eggwanga," meaning he desired Maj.Muhoozi to carry on his job.
According to the story Mr Museveni clearly signalled he had high expectations for his son and also described Gen. Salim Saleh as one of those NRM cadres that are graduating into "more challenging roles." Which job does Museveni want Maj. Muhoozi to carry on? Cattle ranching at Kisozi and Rwakitura?
If this is what he is being prepared for, veterinary studies do not feature prominently on the various curricular he has been pursuing at different academies abroad over the past decade. And the only employment he has held in between was not in the Ministries of Agriculture, but that of Defence?
Maj. Muhoozi attended the world-famous military academy, Sandhurst of UK where he graduated in May 2001 and was later curiously promoted by Libyan leader Col. Muammar Ghadaffi from Lieutenant to Major.
The UPDF sucked the air out of the controversy by describing the new rank as a "loan" for which Muhoozi had to train and work to earn.
In the likelihood that Mr Museveni becomes incapacitated while in office, a scenario whose possibility we've explained in earlier parts of this series, many observes think some system insiders would pick on Maj. Muhoozi, who will in any case have climbed higher in army leadership to take over the presidency.
But if Mr Museveni shares such "presidential plans" for his son, then he might face a wrenching quandary in reconciling them with a scenario if the First Lady Janet equally got orders from above (God) to pursue higher political ambitions as were reported by the Red Pepper.
Patriotism
And that's before Gen. Saleh, a man whom President Museveni has historically praised as a brave and patriotic fighter and "a clean man" despite many controversial issues where he has been cited as a central figure, like the botched underground sale of Uganda Commercial Bank and the junk chopper deal.
Gen. Saleh, according to one State House source, was ats one time ranking high on President Museveni's list of possible successors, alongside Brig. Henry Tumukunde. Then, according to this source, Gen. Saleh ruined his record with "alcohol and an obsession with money" while Brig. Tumukunde later allied himself with the 'wrong forces'.
Still, Gen. Saleh could be persuaded by many due to his strong following within the army and appeal to the ordinary people across the country, in the incident of a power vacuum, to 'hold the fort' and keep the country stable, adding a third dimension to the potential power contenders at State House.
But would the feelings of Ugandans over a member of the first family "inheriting" power from Museveni matter and can they prevent it if they don't like the idea?
There are some basic facts that point us to what is possible and what is less possible. Sources indicate for instance that Maj. Muhoozi has considerable control of PGB, which is widely understood to be the paramount centre of power within the army.
It would be possible for him, if he wanted, to parlay this strategic control and rally the army behind him. However, that is not a guarantee that such a transition would be that smooth.
Some members in senior army leadership might balk at the father-son, husband-wife or brother-brother succession and possibly attempt to foil it, sparking a fight within the military.
"There will likely be a lot of infighting within the palace," remarked Prof. Fredrick Sepebwa. "A coup is still possible."
While Ugandans have largely shown a timid reluctance to engage usurpers of power, they have lately cultivated a stomach for determined confrontation with police, a trend visible since November 2005 when Dr Kiiza Besigye was arrested.
This toughening militancy within the population could be easily exploited by opposition politicians to successfully thwart any extra-constitutional father-son or husband-wife succession.
Of course Mr Museveni's relatives are free to pursue constitutional means to succeed him.
Across the spectrum of Ugandan's political views, there's a general consensus that there's basically nothing wrong with Janet Museveni, Keinerugaba Muhoozi or any of Mr Museveni's close relatives succeeding him as long he/she does so in conformity with the laws of the land.
"Members of the first family, like any other Ugandan, are at liberty to play their rightful role in society," senior politician and Internal Affairs Minister Ruhakana Rugunda said about a possible succession from within the president's household.
However should any of these close relatives fall short on charisma and experience in the skilful and patient maneuvers of statecraft, it's unlikely that they would resist the temptation of using coercive force (the military) to pursue their ambitions.
And if Mr Museveni ever gets incapacitated in office, all forces with access to the military may try to usurp power against resistance from the population, and this could spark one of the most explosive political developments whose consequences are hard to ponder.
Although that story appeared extra-ordinarily remarkable - for better or worse - it was never picked up by pundits in Kampala's energetic debate circuit and it soon slipped under the media radar and then off to the pages of history.
Noteworthy though was that, that report was never refuted by State House.
A few attuned commentators noted it and, in a review of the major news of the year, Daily Monitor writer Mr Timothy Kalyegira cited it as one of the key political news of 2007.
For the first time, a small window was opened for the public into the scale of the political ambitions of the second most powerful member of State House.
And even beyond that it also helped signal to Ugandans the sort of political fault-lines and the jockeying that could form in Uganda's innermost sanctum of power in case President Museveni ever becomes incapacitated in office or resigns.
Insiders in State House told Daily Monitor that President Museveni does not espouse Janet's involvement in politics.
When she announced, late in 2005, that she would compete for the Ruhama County MP seat, Mr Museveni was later quoted by the media as saying that he had tried to discourage his wife from engaging in elective politics.
When someone chooses to set aside the revered status of 'Mother of the Nation' and enter the muddy fields of elective and characteristically partisan politics, it cannot be for a small reason.
Then she explained that in standing, she was obeying a command from God. After gaining the experience of competitive constituency politics for five years, what is to stop God from commanding her to seek the bigger constituency called Uganda?
But since Museveni did not want her in politics, it can be deduced that he has other ideas in his head regarding which members of his circle should succeed him in case his health were to fail him.
In June 2006, while speaking at the launch of Vumilia, an association of soldiers' widows and orphans at Sheraton Hotel, Museveni dropped an eye-popping hint - First Son, Maj. Muhoozi Keinerugaba, he suggested, should start from where he finishes.
Mr Museveni was quoted by Daily Monitor as saying in Luganda, "Omwana yagenda okutwala mu maso omulimo gwa kitawe. Mutabani wange namuyita Muhoozi. Enkya, Muhoozi yagenda okuwolera eggwanga," meaning he desired Maj.Muhoozi to carry on his job.
According to the story Mr Museveni clearly signalled he had high expectations for his son and also described Gen. Salim Saleh as one of those NRM cadres that are graduating into "more challenging roles." Which job does Museveni want Maj. Muhoozi to carry on? Cattle ranching at Kisozi and Rwakitura?
If this is what he is being prepared for, veterinary studies do not feature prominently on the various curricular he has been pursuing at different academies abroad over the past decade. And the only employment he has held in between was not in the Ministries of Agriculture, but that of Defence?
Maj. Muhoozi attended the world-famous military academy, Sandhurst of UK where he graduated in May 2001 and was later curiously promoted by Libyan leader Col. Muammar Ghadaffi from Lieutenant to Major.
The UPDF sucked the air out of the controversy by describing the new rank as a "loan" for which Muhoozi had to train and work to earn.
In the likelihood that Mr Museveni becomes incapacitated while in office, a scenario whose possibility we've explained in earlier parts of this series, many observes think some system insiders would pick on Maj. Muhoozi, who will in any case have climbed higher in army leadership to take over the presidency.
But if Mr Museveni shares such "presidential plans" for his son, then he might face a wrenching quandary in reconciling them with a scenario if the First Lady Janet equally got orders from above (God) to pursue higher political ambitions as were reported by the Red Pepper.
Patriotism
And that's before Gen. Saleh, a man whom President Museveni has historically praised as a brave and patriotic fighter and "a clean man" despite many controversial issues where he has been cited as a central figure, like the botched underground sale of Uganda Commercial Bank and the junk chopper deal.
Gen. Saleh, according to one State House source, was ats one time ranking high on President Museveni's list of possible successors, alongside Brig. Henry Tumukunde. Then, according to this source, Gen. Saleh ruined his record with "alcohol and an obsession with money" while Brig. Tumukunde later allied himself with the 'wrong forces'.
Still, Gen. Saleh could be persuaded by many due to his strong following within the army and appeal to the ordinary people across the country, in the incident of a power vacuum, to 'hold the fort' and keep the country stable, adding a third dimension to the potential power contenders at State House.
But would the feelings of Ugandans over a member of the first family "inheriting" power from Museveni matter and can they prevent it if they don't like the idea?
There are some basic facts that point us to what is possible and what is less possible. Sources indicate for instance that Maj. Muhoozi has considerable control of PGB, which is widely understood to be the paramount centre of power within the army.
It would be possible for him, if he wanted, to parlay this strategic control and rally the army behind him. However, that is not a guarantee that such a transition would be that smooth.
Some members in senior army leadership might balk at the father-son, husband-wife or brother-brother succession and possibly attempt to foil it, sparking a fight within the military.
"There will likely be a lot of infighting within the palace," remarked Prof. Fredrick Sepebwa. "A coup is still possible."
While Ugandans have largely shown a timid reluctance to engage usurpers of power, they have lately cultivated a stomach for determined confrontation with police, a trend visible since November 2005 when Dr Kiiza Besigye was arrested.
This toughening militancy within the population could be easily exploited by opposition politicians to successfully thwart any extra-constitutional father-son or husband-wife succession.
Of course Mr Museveni's relatives are free to pursue constitutional means to succeed him.
Across the spectrum of Ugandan's political views, there's a general consensus that there's basically nothing wrong with Janet Museveni, Keinerugaba Muhoozi or any of Mr Museveni's close relatives succeeding him as long he/she does so in conformity with the laws of the land.
"Members of the first family, like any other Ugandan, are at liberty to play their rightful role in society," senior politician and Internal Affairs Minister Ruhakana Rugunda said about a possible succession from within the president's household.
However should any of these close relatives fall short on charisma and experience in the skilful and patient maneuvers of statecraft, it's unlikely that they would resist the temptation of using coercive force (the military) to pursue their ambitions.
And if Mr Museveni ever gets incapacitated in office, all forces with access to the military may try to usurp power against resistance from the population, and this could spark one of the most explosive political developments whose consequences are hard to ponder.
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