The NRM regime is a shame to Bush War heroes - Besigye

Having retired as party president for Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), and now involved in anti-regime crusades, Dr Kizza Besigye remains a vocal critic and above all a fearless man who has put the government on the defensive. Sunday Monitor’s Richard Wanambwa caught with the former Bush War hero, who fell out with the regime he helped to establish.

The other cardinal point was security of persons and property. On that front, Uganda has had mixed fortunes in the 27 years. There are areas which have suffered, especially in the north, West Nile, east, Rwenzori areas and part of Buganda.

But to many Ugandans, they are actually thankful to the NRM for peace and security. Actually in some parts of Buganda, people say NRM re-introduced sleep (Tulo). So don’t you think that the NRM has achieved on peace and security?

In some parts of the country where there were no insurgencies, especially the Southern and Central Uganda, security has been generally better than it was before 1986 and one can say, therefore, thanks to the NRM government. But that is debatable because indeed there was no challenge to the regime.

The reasons for abuse of human rights and insecurity before 1986 are that there were a lot of challenges to the regime within Luweero. So one could then argue that if there were similar challenges here, we would have a similar situation as before, but happily there wasn’t and therefore security in some parts of the south and the central has been better in the last 27 years.

But as you may have realised security is also deteriorating because of the terrible poverty that has bedevilled every Ugandan and as we talk in some areas, people can’t sleep in their houses. We have seen many cases where families are slaughtered, we have the iron bar hit men rampaging all over the place and all other kind of crimes. That was another cardinal of the NRM programme.

But the NRM has grown the economy; President Museveni revealed at the same function that the economy is growing 14 times annually?
It is very clearly spelt out that the aim of the NRM was to establish an integrated self-sustaining mixed economy. Integrated means, the intention then was that agriculture would be integrated with industry so that there is value addition for what is produced. And that industry would be producing what people in agriculture need, whether it is tractors, ox-ploughs, irrigation technology and so forth.

Industry would be linked to housing so that the housing industry would benefit the production locally and so if you are building, you don’t have to import house equipment. Same with transport benefiting from industry, but what has happened after 27 years?

In fact on the day of swearing in, Museveni wondered how anybody could call himself His Excellency the President when his country cannot even make a needle, how can somebody call himself the president and ride in a presidential jet to the UN when his people are suffering from jiggers, they have no shoes? 27 years later he has bought four presidential jets, he has the latest presidential jet, jiggers are actually killing people and Uganda certainly cannot make a needle; we are importing all needles to this country.

And has destroyed the industrial base he found because we had a railway which was providing transport from Mombasa all the way to Kasese, Pakwach in West Nile through the north but it has gone after 27 years.

We used to have Uganda Airlines but parts of it were sold to Kutesa [Sam] and Saleh. So today Uganda does not own a carrier, we depend on Kenya Airways, South African Airways, British Airways and now Rwanda Air.

That is the Museveni regime of 27 years. And all our industries we had, Nytil industries making cement and all kinds of things were all sold or stolen. We had financial services under Uganda Commercial Bank, Uganda Hotels which was a proud heartbeat of tourism. All these things were sold.

And I am not against selling them because some of them were not efficiently run by the government. I am not opposing privatisation but having privatised, 27 years later, nobody has ever shown Ugandans how much money was realised from selling all national asserts and what that money has done. And the NRM programme was not a private sector economy but it was a mixed one, which envisaged that money would go to stimulate areas where private sector wouldn’t do.

Where is that money? How much is it anyway, nobody knows and certainly it has not been reflected in the accounts in the Bank of Uganda in the consolidated fund. So we can safely assume that the country’s assets were actually stolen.

The current regime is, therefore, a shame for everybody who associated with the struggle.

editorial@ug.nationmedia.com