Why MP-elect stage-managed stealing of Shs80,000 phone
As you read this, a mobile money dealer in the country is being gunned down by thugs. Their life and hard-earned money is taken.
No arrest will be made thereafter. And life goes on.
As you read this far, an MP-elect is in a daze after he was charged with allegedly moonwalking with a ‘Kabiriti’ phone valued at just Shs85k from downtown.
I don’t know why he has been arrested in the first place. Let’s get this right. Police know this guy is an MP-elect who will be working from a place where 526 men and women converge every day, sometimes negotiating deals on camera, what’s wrong with the MP-elect practicing early, on CCTV camera?
This is witch-hunt proper. When have police ever arrested an MP for all the many times we have accused them of taking bribes in millions of shillings and not just 85K? From term limits to age limits and many other times, MPs have pocketed millions of shillings.
Police have never shown interest. Yet now, to deflect the memes their new traffic police uniform is receiving on social media, they have decided to arrest an incoming MP over what can only be described as “acting innocently inappropriate.”
We should cut the MP-elect some slack.
In fact, if Gen Tumwine had not run out of minerals for making those medals they dish around during national celebrations, the MP-elect would be the most deserving of one.
According to the charges, he simply walked into the place and moonwalked out with what he needed.
He did not tiptoe so we cannot call him a thief. He did not kill the dealer so we cannot call him a thief. He hasn’t even claimed that he was going to use the phone to consult his constituents on how he should dress up during the swearing in come May. How do we call such a good man a thief?
We have to anxiously wait for the court to determine whether the MP-elect exercised his ‘money-plundering’ mandate or not, but if he is found guilty to be a thief, then suffice to admit that he is the most qualified to the opposition ‘chief whip’.
The real money plunderers in the House do not get arrested. Whenever someone points the finger at them, they quickly say the money illicitly wired into their accounts is for consultations at their constituency.
Now, stealing itself is not bad. What is bad is being caught. Worse is being arrested for it. And the worst, a conviction. However, all these apply in normal situations. In the abnormal normal that Uganda has lived with for decades, the white collar thief must be known to the public but celebrated for it.
That explains why I have a feeling that the MP-elect stage-managed his claim to fame as a money plunderer long before he swears in even.
