A corrupt govt, an incompetent one, or a Big Man past his prime: Choose

Continue agitating for Museveni to go home, weakening him in the process, and opening doors for even worse forces and relatives, who are watching his struggles patiently like vultures. Thus if it is not Museveni, then expect worse.

So we are told that at the ongoing ruling National Resistance Movement (NRM) retreat, Buyaga representative Barnabas Tinkasiimire plucked courage and told President Yoweri Museveni to his face that he should restore term limits and retire.

Over the past 10 or so years, both the Opposition and a few NRM politicians have asked Museveni to go back home and tend his cattle, as he himself likes to say. For the Opposition, that is expected. For the NRMs, it is not surprising that they would say it behind Museveni’s back. What is unusual is to stare the tiger in the face and speak truth to it.

But I shall not focus on Tinkasiimire’s plunge, because that will be failing to see the forest for the trees. We usually hear calls for President Museveni, now among the longest ruling leaders not just in Africa, but also in the world, to step down during certain events. One, when we have diseases like “nodding disease” and the government responds in a lazy and uncaring way, at a time when reports have it that money meant for drugs has been stolen.

Secondly, when there are shocking cases of corruption, beginning with the GAVI funds that were meant for vaccination and fighting tuberculosis; to the recent saga of Northern Uganda reconstruction looted in the Office of the Prime Minister; to the robbery of billions of shillings worth of pensioners’ money.

Thirdly, when military campaigns go horribly wrong, as they did in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo some years ago; when Joseph Kony’s Lords’ Resistance Army was elusive and wreaking havoc; or when the army committed atrocities against civilians, again in the north. As happens, the army has been out of the news in the last five or so years. Gen Aronda Nyakairima, the most low-key UPDF army commander since Maj. Gen. (retired) Muntu Mugisha, seems to have done a good job of cleaning the military’s nose. He has also proved that perhaps the best way to be army chief is to do the job quietly, not in a market with all the clamour around you.

The effect of all these agitations over both the NRM’s and Museveni’s record over the years has been to frame three choices for Uganda. The first choice is for Ugandans to choose to live with an incompetent government that can’t fix roads, deal effectively with mudslides in Bududa, get on top of nodding disease, and so on.

The next is to choose a corrupt government that pockets every money it sets its eyes on – Uganda shillings, US dollars, or Euros; and whose officials steal everything even if it is nailed down (like a radio mast), locked away in a vault in the Bank of Uganda, or buried away deep in the drawers in the Treasury.

The third choice is to stick with an aging and belligerent president, with his circle of oligarchs.
I was wrong. There is a fourth; continue agitating for Museveni to go home, weakening him in the process, and opening doors for even worse forces and relatives, who are watching his struggles patiently like vultures. Thus if it is not Museveni, then expect worse. So, the devil we know. In many ways, this is closely related to the third option.

Absent from all the scenarios is hope, or something that is not as bad and morally illegitimate as the country now has. Call it the “Monti option”. In November 2011, with Italy in deep financial trouble and its womanising and corrupt prime minister Silvio Berlusconi having turned it the world’s laughing stock, the rogue was ousted. Mario Monti, a technocratic chap, unelected, took over and stopped the economic bleeding.

There is no “Monti option” not so much because Uganda doesn’t have a Monti, but because the discussion about the way forward is not being cast widely enough, and those who are disgusted with Museveni’s rule think he has stank the presidency, and just by leaving it, Uganda will be better.
In this way, we have become stuck with the three options. So I will be courageous like MP Tinkasiimire and make a choice. I choose an incompetent NRM government.

Yes, I know that with an incompetent government some roads will continue to go to rot; Mulago Hospital and others will just get worse; and little will be done to combat diseases like nodding disease. However, on the latter, I can say that we can blame God, not Museveni. It would have divided the country even more if Museveni had been accused of having brought nodding disease.

That is the beauty of an incompetent government. It is less likely to dig us deeper into a mess, and do things like increasing public debt (your children and grandchildren’s debt) because it is refunding donor funds stolen by corrupt officials using taxpayers’ money.

cobbo@ke.nationmedia.com & twitter@cobbo3