World Bank shames Uganda as MPs, Museveni chase own interests
It is a good thing that MPs are thinking of dying and are planning for it. What have they been waiting for all this time? No matter, I very much encourage them to continue along their dust-to-dust path. Uganda could turn out the better off for it.
Look, the World Bank is withholding new lending to Uganda because of the incompetence of our politicians and technocrats. The Bank’s loans are not being used to deliver value for money. There are “delays in project effectiveness, weaknesses in safeguards monitoring and enforcement, and low disbursement”.
President Museveni and company cry all the time that Uganda is a poor country with a “limited resource envelope” and that is why they can’t provide sensible education and healthcare to Ugandans. But even when they willing get loans and grants, on good terms moreover, they act so blasé.
None a dignitary than Finance Permanent Secretary/Secretary to the Treasury Keith Muhakanizi thinks Uganda is at the bottom in Africa in using World Bank money. Yet he doesn’t even resign for that. He passes the buck to the “ministries that implement these projects, not me”.
No sense of shame. No sense of outrage.
The other day President Museveni was also just whining about the near non-expenditure of loans and grants to build things like hundreds of schools around the country. He claims this term is Kisanja Hakuna Mchezo, yet he can’t bring himself to fire ministers and permanent secretaries guilty of poor/non-expenditure of borrowed dollars.
Hakuna Mchezo is, of course, empty sloganeering. Mr Museveni’s laser focus is not on effective government, it is on how to get another kisanja. The first step in the effort is MP Kafeero Ssekitoleko’s very urgent desire to change the Constitution and raise the retirement age of judges. Next, logically, is to remove the presidential age limit to allow Mr Museveni go for it again in 2021.
The MPs, cunning as ever, pick their cue from the President and take full advantage. They know they will give Mr Museveni his kisanja anyway, and so they must extract their pound of flesh while at it.
They seek cars that cost hundreds of millions of shillings. They pay themselves hefty per diems to go on endless and mostly useless foreign trips. They now want nearly Shs70 million put aside for each MP’s death.
So Mr Museveni is focused on getting his nth kisanja. The MPs are focused on extracting every perk. Neither President nor MP cares enough for the welfare of Ugandans. This is a dangerous incestuous relationship. The result, of course, is what the World Bank has just done.
Bizarrely, when their greed is exposed, the MPs lash out like tempestuous teenagers. The media is now Parliament’s punching bag, the soft target. MPs, conspiratorial in true peasant mentality, think there is someone behind a media campaign to tarnish the image of Parliament as if it is the media that orders them to be greedy and deaf and blind to the suffering of Ugandans. They want to stiffen media laws to tighten screws around journalists.
Basically, they are abusing their law-making powers to go after media simply because they are embarrassed, not because the laws will advance media freedoms.
This behaviour is not just dishonourable. It stinks.
Their boss leads the way, unfortunately. Speaker Rebecca Kadaga has instructed the Committee on Rules and Privileges to investigate journalists who write “negatively” so they can be held in contempt of Parliament.
This Speaker is quite pernicious. Under Ms Kadaga’s six-year reign thus far, she has in a pique banned reporters from covering Parliament (a move overturned by the courts); she doesn’t want reporters to cover Parliament for more than five years; she doesn’t want reporters without degrees. As is, she is still unhappy with the media. What next? Ban media entirely from covering Parliament? That is impossible.
Politicians still love the media’s bright lights, but without the shadows. Knowing that, media houses just have to call the MPs’ bluff and face them down, challenge their bullying tactics. All will be okay.
For now, as MPs continue in their blind greed and Mr Museveni goes for another term, they should all find some time to run a minimally effective government. We demand it. It is treasonable to claim all the privileges of MP or President and not discharge the obligations that come with those titles. We didn’t elect you guys to throw self-importance in our faces.
Mr Tabaire is the co-founder and director of programmes at African Centre for Media Excellence in Kampala.
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Twitter:@btabaire
