May 1, 11 12:10 PM
I have read with concern the remarks by the president on the closure of the Interreligious Council meeting and I felt duty-bound to respond.
For how long does it take a leader to generate electricity in his country – ten years; twenty years or fifty years? Doesn’t this mean that a whole generation can be condemned to poverty if a leader celebrates a silver jubilee in power and he is still talking about basic infrastructure? If we have not got those basic needs in such a long time, what guarantee is there that we shall get them in a period whose duration we don’t know?
That professor Oloka Onyango is poisoning our children with lies in Makerere: Is Professor Oloka-Onyango the one who promised a fundamental change and all we are seeing instead is no change? I would like to know whether Museveni is a taxpayer and Oloka-Onyango is not.
That if they were dictators, Professor Oloka-Onyango wouldn’t be alive teaching in Makerere depending on taxpayers’ money while poisoning their children: I find this absurd. All I know is Prof Oloka-Onyango is a Ugandan taxpayer and he is in that university not as a favour but because he qualifies to be there. Is this not a veiled threat against the good professor? By the way, although, Professor Oloka Onyango is alive it doesn’t mean there aren’t other people who have died at the hands of the state operatives who ironically are supposed to protect them. The Anglican prayer book says, “Constantly speak he truth; boldly rebuke vice and patiently suffer for the truth’s sake”. I applaud Professor Oloka for speaking the truth although it sounds unpalatable to those wielding power.
Since the president wants the truth, let him tell us why he never retired as he promised on page 11 in his manifesto in 2001? Let him tell us why we don’t have community polytechnics that he promised in 1996? Let him tell us whether it is not him that has ordered the brutalizing of the opposition leaders?
The country’s concern is not whether or not Museveni has won elections. The major concern is whether the president is doing what he is mandated to do. Is he delivering according to our expectation? In 2009, within a week that students were reporting, the government instead of funding public universities endorsed an increment of tuition fee up to 126%. It was never 40% as our media houses reported. I personally wrote to the president complaining about this unfair development. We took a petition to parliament with clear reasons as to why we opposed the increment. Rather than listening to us, I had to serve a jail sentence on trumped up charges of assault and threatening violence on top of being brutally tortured by the police who even stole my money. Right now, it is difficult for professors to sponsor their own children in a university in which they teach. We have a collapsed health system; public servants including Professor Oloka-Onyango whom the president said, should go and hang, are paid peanuts! Yet the president and his apparatchiks live in glamour, grandeur, sumptuousness, opulence, pomp, pageantry and ostentation!
All we need is not only political but also financial accountability for our money. We part with thirty percent every month in Pay As You Earn which Andrew Mwenda used to call Pay As Yoweri Earns, we part with 18 percent on Value Added Tax on each commodity we purchase and a host of other taxes and the president insults whoever asks him for accountability. We know we cannot have credible elections organized by the commission hand-picked by the president. Given the power of incumbency, it is only somnambulists who would think, Museveni could be beaten at the polls organised by him. Some of his spin doctors who have always argued that Museveni won clean and square have testified that he used about 1 trillion shillings from taxpayers’ money and some from his friends. How, then, can we have a free and fair election where the incumbent is using taxpayers’ money. And not just taxpayers’ money but colossal sums of taxpayers money!
That the radios never gave unfair advantage to the president: Virtually all the upcountry radio stations are owned by NRM members – some of them ministers and members of parliament. Amama Mbabazi, Igeme Nabeta, Nuru Byamukama, Jim Muhwezi, Mike Mukula etc. Moreover, the state-owned radio, UBC and those owned by Vision Group of companies also favoured the incumbent. So who is speaking the truth?
That incumbency didn’t favour Museveni because he had to divide his time for campaigns and national duties: Because he was a candidate and a president at the same time, he couldn’t distinguish between Museveni the presidential candidate and Museveni the president. This gave him an unfair advantage over other candidates as he used state funds to solicit for his votes and the votes for the NRM candidates. He should account for the more than 600 billion shillings supplementary budget which was passed during the campaigns and hardly after a month the finance minister said, government was broke! The 20 million shillings given to MPs reportedly for supervising the NAADS programme in the heat of the campaigns was rightly construed to be a bribe.
That incumbency is a disadvantage is a blatant lie. He should know that the people he was addressing – religious leaders are very informed people. Some of them have Phds. Because of incumbency, he began and has always began his campaigns before other candidates in the guise of “prosperity for all”, monitoring government programmes and so forth using taxpayers’ money. In fact, during these tours, the president hands over brown envelopes containing cash to a number of people which is also construed to be a bribe to the electorate.
I don’t think the president has the moral authority to talk about politicians who lie. This really is a case of a pot calling a kettle black. Sadly, whoever speaks the truth, Museveni labels such a person a liar.
I think careerists in politics are people who look at politics as a career. I would want to know, apart from politics, what other office has Museveni ever occupied since he finished university in 1969 if I am not mistaken? He has been in power for quarter a century now; twenty five years down the line, he is still talking of the vision. I don’t know whether his vision will be realised in 2050. If president Museveni is not a career politician, he should kindly tell us which other Ugandan is a career politician.
That the culture of giving money to voters has been started by these young careerists:
Again, the president is at it. His cadres in Bushenyi – Nasser Bassajabalaba, Hassan Basajabalaba, Willis Bashasha were openly buying votes for him and for themselves. So who does he blame? Does he want to say that the opposition had more money to buy votes than the NRM? In every cell, at least in my home county Ruhinda a chairman was given Shs120,000 and there were thirty people each of whom was given 5,000 shillings. This is the amount of money that everyone knows about. But also on the eve of voting and on the voting day, NRM cadres were distributing cash and other valuables. So who are these careerists buying votes?
If the president doesn’t want people to call the gifts and brown envelopes bribes, he should stop using taxpayers’ money. He should use his own money but also the prctice will be suspect when it takes place during the campaign period. Otherwise, taxpayers are entitled to know the criterion followed while giving those gifts. I would also need to know whether it is a constitutional duty for the president to give gifts to religious leaders. And, incidentally, we would wish to know whether the groups or people that the president often gives gifts are the neediest people. When a president gives a Land Cruiser to a bishop, it follows that many people of his flock may be swayed by the act of charity to the bishop.
That the president wants to push for the amendment of the constitution to deny certain categories of offenders bail raises suspicion. I know some opposition figures may soon be charged with treason and terrorism and this amendment could be aimed at denying them bail. The president again wants the people who are presumed innocent to continue being penalized like the practice is. If he abhors the practice of giving bail to the murderers he should begin by locking up Ofwono Opondo who killed a person at Kitante Primary school sometime back and he continues walking with his head high.
About term limits: I am amazed that the man who stated in black and white that Africa’s problem are the leaders who overstay in power is the one praising the desecration of our constitution by removing the most sacrosanct provision. The Banyankore say, nowahinga ahorobi ayinuka which means, even if one is tilling a soft ground, time reaches when they have to retire. I want to state, like Shakespeare stated, the world is a theatre; man comes, plays his part and then goes. In our neighbourhood here in Tanzania, Hassan Mwinyi is alive, Ben Mkapa is alive; Nyerere didn’t die in power; Daniel Arap Moi is around in Kenya; what’s so unique with us here?
On unemployment: There seems to me, to be a deliberate move by the regime to keep many Ugandans jobless. I have stated elsewhere that in Uganda, the biggest unemployment problem we are facing is graduate unemployment. Yet all Ugandan universities have produced not more than 300,000 graduates. Out of these, a sizeable number is from neighbouring countries – Rwanda, Tanzania, Kenya, Sudan, among others because Uganda was and still is an education hub. These foreigners often go back after finishing their studies. We also have very few people studying from outside Uganda – notably those from topnotch families. Accordingly, genuine Ugandans with university degrees are not more than 200,000 (two hundred thousand). Why they don’t get jobs is simply because jobs are given on patronage basis to friends, relatives and in-laws of the political elites most of who forge academic documents from Nasser Road. The president was recently quoted in the New Vision saying the unemployed should sell juice and fruits! I have stated before that those that are not well educated are comfortably employed as Boda Boda cyclists, shoe shiners, barbers, wheel barrow pushers, fruit vendors, house maids and house boys and so forth. Now you see the the solution that the president has for the unemployment problem!
Way forward
On the problem of graduate unemployment, the government must ask all the employers whether in the private sector or public sector to verify the credentials of the people they employ with the respective institutions those people claim to have studied from. If you get a Makerere University transcript from Nasser Road, you will be unearthed if your document is taken to Makerere for verification and you don’t appear in Makerere University database. If you have a forged A or O level certificate, government must check with UNEB and the schools named. As things unfold, Besigye’s tormentor may have forged documents to obtain a degree. Otherwise, what describes a discrepancy between the names he used in the lower levels of education and the ones he uses now?
Government must make sure higher education including university education is accessible on merit not on the basis of affluence. University fees in public universities are too much to bear by the ordinary person but also by most employees including civil servants. Accordingly, government must reduce tuition fees as the president promised during his campaigns but also increase funding to the universities for research and enhancement of the academic staff salaries.
The government promised to launch a students’ loan scheme which the president promised even before he started his campaigns. This loan scheme is long overdue and it should cater for all those that have dropped out of universities on account of failing to raise tuition fees. I am sure, since other countries have managed it, Uganda also must.
Government must increase the salaries of all employees and urge the private employers to increase the remuneration for their employs to match with the rising costs of living.
Government must intervene by cutting the fuel taxes but also taxes on all other commodity prices. I find the argument that when government reduces taxes, there will be no money for roads and electricity lame. The state is there for the good of its citizens. There are immediate needs that need to be prioritized and these are survival needs.
Government must bring to book all regime supporters that have flagrantly abused the law. We cannot accept a situation where criminality is condoned as long as it is done in support of the sitting regime. There must be a distinction between the state and the regime. Accordingly, Gilbert Arinaitwe Bwana who tortured, tormented and traumatized Dr Besigye should immediately be brought to book; Ofwono Opondo who shot a person in broad day light should also be prosecuted; Kale Kayihura a man under whose supervision Gilbert Arinaitwe Bwana works should also be brought to book.
The dialogue that government is proposing with the opposition is meaningless if the above issues are not handled. We demand to live in a country where our dignity as human beings is respected.
Finally, if shillings 1.8 trillion that has been unconstitutionally appropriated to buy fighter jets, (I don’t know what for) was to be distributed among 100,000 unemployed graduates, each one would get 18million shillings to be able to begin a job for himself/herself. It is nauseating and disgusting to find that our graduates have become paupers and criminals of all sorts just because they cannot get what to do when the government misallocates resources.
The recommendations I have given are by no means exhaustive but they will inevitably endear the government to the citizens if they worked upon. If they are disregarded, the government will further alienate itself from the citizens and calls by the opposition to withdraw the social contract will always attract public attention. It is futile for the ruling party to think that it will continuously buy votes, manipulate and deceive the masses to stay in power. Even if that is successfully done, some of us who know what the government should do will continue to protest. Incidentally, some people have chosen to go to prison in protest. At least, Honourable Mao told me when I visited him in Luzira that even by being in prison, he was protesting. Mr President, please, never ever think of criminalizing protests against the government. Thomas Jefferson said, “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism”. Accordingly, people who express dissent with the manner in which government is run are not saboteurs; they are not traitors but the greatest patriots.
Vincent Nuwagaba is a human rights defender
vnuwagaba@gmail.com
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