Another ridiculous police action occurs

It is dishonest and unlawful for the police to pretend to wield the right to determine the manner or form of protest against corruption.

It’s a well known fact that the Uganda Police Force has gained such notoriety for the absurd, but few could have imagined that even they could plunge to such preposterous depths as saw them arrest a bishop for protesting against the vice of corruption!

It was quite amusing seeing the sheepish looks on the officers’ faces at Wandegeya Police Station as the eloquent Bishop Zac Niringiye used the occasion to hand down one of his famous homilies on the plunder of public finances. The irony of the setting for the sermon was not lost on many. How do you keep a straight face after you arrest someone for protesting against a crime?

How will the police, who continue to behave as blatantly partisan these days, explain this apparent sabotage of President Museveni’s perennial re-dedications to zero tolerance for the theft of taxpayers’ money? One of the ridiculous suggestions emanating from the Police Force is that the Black Monday Movement, of which the bishop is a member, is inciting the public through its campaign. There is no truth to this wild allegation.
All the organisation has done is shine another light on the thieves in government who are partly responsible for the collapse in social services.

It is, therefore, only such scoundrels whose criminal actions have condemned many to death in our hospitals who should feel threatened by this campaign. Remember too that because of corruption, public school education is a farce and every effort to lift the agricultural sector up has been frustrated. The list of ignominies is endless.

These crimes against the people as we have seen in the pension sector, in the Office of the Prime Minister and elsewhere, must be exposed and punished.

It is dishonest and unlawful for the police to pretend to wield the right to determine the manner or form of protest against corruption. Peaceful protest, and the Black Monday Movement have been peacefully distributing their flyers, is a constitutionally protected right.

Just as the outpouring of righteous indignation forced proponents of that ludicrous coup mumbo jumbo into a hasty retreat, the one way guaranteed to snap the leech-like mafia networks sucking our country dry is to encourage widespread public activism against this vice. A concerted mass action taken on as a patriotic duty should succeed even where the police appear to have been co-opted on the side of corruption.