President Museveni after he was sworn in for his first elective term in
1996. He will this week swear in for a fourth term.
“To the one with a hammer, everything looks like a
nail”, is one of my favourite clichés. Deciphering this Abraham Maslow’s
text is obvious: with limited tools, inclined people apply them
inappropriately or indiscriminately. If such people are familiar with a
single subject or single instrument, they imagine that it is the answer
to everything.
It is such people that use a hammer to swat a fly off someone’s head. And talking about “hammers”, this is possibly the most mentioned word in Parliament nowadays. Instead of asking the government to do something about the agonising double-digit inflation, our MPs spent the whole of last week watching footage of the violent arrest of opposition leader Kizza Besigye on April 28.
And the power of propaganda was at play. As if to show how crafty we have become as a nation, the MPs were shown two different accounts of what happened that Thursday. But it was obvious that one of the versions had been edited and ended up as a concoction whose motives only the creative directors would know.
But for some of us watching this comedy from the gallery, the debate on the hammer left us wondering who was fooling the nation. It was disheartening to see what was obvious and had been accurately captured by the media days back being manipulated to serve selfish political interests. But it was even more sickening to see the likes of the First Lady, instead of reaching out to victims of wanton police and security brutality, instead trying to shift the discussion onto the persona of Dr Besigye.
When some government officials like Junior Internal Affairs Minister Matia Kasaija threatened to “investigate” Daily Monitor and other media for publishing pictures of Dr Besigye’s attackers, especially the man in a hood who turned up with a hammer to smash the car, the scene became fully tragi-comic.
Yes, ardent readers, that is what our MPs were doing the whole of last week. This “painstaking and intellectual” process was concluded with a “bogus” motion asking the government to investigate the incident.
As the opposition walked out, the futility of the resolution lay in the fact that it is just a week before the 9th Parliament is sworn in and therefore whatever comes out of that investigation will never be tabled let alone debated.
The oath
Away from Parliament—this week will be another historic one. On Thursday, President Museveni takes to the podium to mark the official start of his fourth term. At the end of this five-year term, Mr Museveni would have hit the 30-year mark on the Ugandan “throne”.
This journey will start with an oath on Thursday—an oath that might last less than a minute but whose impact will have long-term effects. To begin with, when the President is done dancing at the inaugural bash, the tax payers would have footed a bill of Shs4 billion for the one-day fete.
At least 32 heads of state are expected to grace the function up from 11 leaders who attended a similar function five years ago. While opposition MPs had asked the President to walk to his swearing-in as he did on January 29, 1986, some ministers said the country had moved on.
Mr Museveni says the pomp is necessary since he will be talking business with his peers.
The cost aside, President Museveni begins his political voyage on a bumpy road. There are key challenges awaiting him. From the blatant abuse of public funds through widespread corruption, public discontent over double-digit inflation to the biting unemployment, poverty and struggling health care, the President has his work cut out. It is this foggy image the President will ask the almighty God to help him tackle within the next five years.
Although some analysts are cynical about the economic growth vis-à-vis poverty levels, the truth is that Mr Museveni has boosted revenue collections from Shs5.1b in 1986 to about Shs5 trillion to date and excelled in maintaining security.
While formal democratic structures have been put in place, they have had less influence on our politics and service delivery. In fact, what we have under the so-called multi-party political setting appears more like a flawed democratic transition that has fallen prey to vested political interests and manipulations we see in Parliament.
Though the government has made some progress in reducing poverty from 56 per cent in 1992/03 to 31 per cent in 2005/06 and about 24 per cent to-date this change is still largely reflected in data and the trickle-down effects are totally non-existent. In fact, connecting poverty reductions to figurative economic growth remains a huge gamble.
For instance, the labour force continues to grow at a rate of about 3.4 per cent per annum-- resulting in 400,000 new job seekers entering the market and yet only 8,000 jobs are available. Other statistics show that for every single job, there are more than 50 qualified jobless Ugandans chasing for it. The World Bank warns of a ticking time bomb if government continues to pay no attention to youth unemployment.
One area that could help the government deal with the widespread unemployment is agriculture. This sector is the hallmark of the economy-employing over 80 per cent of the work force. However, due to corruption and poor funding, this sector is limping. The Naads —Bona-Bagagawale (prosperity for all) has worked for the well-connected individuals yet ordinary peasants continue to miss the boat.
But even if Mr Museveni, during the oath, asks God to help him, without helping himself by dropping corrupt ministers from his Cabinet, it will be a request in vain.
He will renew the oath of office, but the challenges will stay. There is need for political will to seriously address the issue of corruption—an impediment to national development. It’s never too late to do the right thing. It is not only the President who will be taking oath. Hundreds of MPs will do likewise in the coming days. They have a chance to make or break this country.
It’s up to them. Otherwise, they should know that hope begins in the dark. Until one is committed to every syllable of that oath, not much will come to fruition.
ymugerwa@ug.nationmedia.com
It is such people that use a hammer to swat a fly off someone’s head. And talking about “hammers”, this is possibly the most mentioned word in Parliament nowadays. Instead of asking the government to do something about the agonising double-digit inflation, our MPs spent the whole of last week watching footage of the violent arrest of opposition leader Kizza Besigye on April 28.
And the power of propaganda was at play. As if to show how crafty we have become as a nation, the MPs were shown two different accounts of what happened that Thursday. But it was obvious that one of the versions had been edited and ended up as a concoction whose motives only the creative directors would know.
But for some of us watching this comedy from the gallery, the debate on the hammer left us wondering who was fooling the nation. It was disheartening to see what was obvious and had been accurately captured by the media days back being manipulated to serve selfish political interests. But it was even more sickening to see the likes of the First Lady, instead of reaching out to victims of wanton police and security brutality, instead trying to shift the discussion onto the persona of Dr Besigye.
When some government officials like Junior Internal Affairs Minister Matia Kasaija threatened to “investigate” Daily Monitor and other media for publishing pictures of Dr Besigye’s attackers, especially the man in a hood who turned up with a hammer to smash the car, the scene became fully tragi-comic.
Yes, ardent readers, that is what our MPs were doing the whole of last week. This “painstaking and intellectual” process was concluded with a “bogus” motion asking the government to investigate the incident.
As the opposition walked out, the futility of the resolution lay in the fact that it is just a week before the 9th Parliament is sworn in and therefore whatever comes out of that investigation will never be tabled let alone debated.
The oath
Away from Parliament—this week will be another historic one. On Thursday, President Museveni takes to the podium to mark the official start of his fourth term. At the end of this five-year term, Mr Museveni would have hit the 30-year mark on the Ugandan “throne”.
This journey will start with an oath on Thursday—an oath that might last less than a minute but whose impact will have long-term effects. To begin with, when the President is done dancing at the inaugural bash, the tax payers would have footed a bill of Shs4 billion for the one-day fete.
At least 32 heads of state are expected to grace the function up from 11 leaders who attended a similar function five years ago. While opposition MPs had asked the President to walk to his swearing-in as he did on January 29, 1986, some ministers said the country had moved on.
Mr Museveni says the pomp is necessary since he will be talking business with his peers.
The cost aside, President Museveni begins his political voyage on a bumpy road. There are key challenges awaiting him. From the blatant abuse of public funds through widespread corruption, public discontent over double-digit inflation to the biting unemployment, poverty and struggling health care, the President has his work cut out. It is this foggy image the President will ask the almighty God to help him tackle within the next five years.
Although some analysts are cynical about the economic growth vis-à-vis poverty levels, the truth is that Mr Museveni has boosted revenue collections from Shs5.1b in 1986 to about Shs5 trillion to date and excelled in maintaining security.
While formal democratic structures have been put in place, they have had less influence on our politics and service delivery. In fact, what we have under the so-called multi-party political setting appears more like a flawed democratic transition that has fallen prey to vested political interests and manipulations we see in Parliament.
Though the government has made some progress in reducing poverty from 56 per cent in 1992/03 to 31 per cent in 2005/06 and about 24 per cent to-date this change is still largely reflected in data and the trickle-down effects are totally non-existent. In fact, connecting poverty reductions to figurative economic growth remains a huge gamble.
For instance, the labour force continues to grow at a rate of about 3.4 per cent per annum-- resulting in 400,000 new job seekers entering the market and yet only 8,000 jobs are available. Other statistics show that for every single job, there are more than 50 qualified jobless Ugandans chasing for it. The World Bank warns of a ticking time bomb if government continues to pay no attention to youth unemployment.
One area that could help the government deal with the widespread unemployment is agriculture. This sector is the hallmark of the economy-employing over 80 per cent of the work force. However, due to corruption and poor funding, this sector is limping. The Naads —Bona-Bagagawale (prosperity for all) has worked for the well-connected individuals yet ordinary peasants continue to miss the boat.
But even if Mr Museveni, during the oath, asks God to help him, without helping himself by dropping corrupt ministers from his Cabinet, it will be a request in vain.
He will renew the oath of office, but the challenges will stay. There is need for political will to seriously address the issue of corruption—an impediment to national development. It’s never too late to do the right thing. It is not only the President who will be taking oath. Hundreds of MPs will do likewise in the coming days. They have a chance to make or break this country.
It’s up to them. Otherwise, they should know that hope begins in the dark. Until one is committed to every syllable of that oath, not much will come to fruition.
ymugerwa@ug.nationmedia.com
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