Mpuuga and NUP’s dilemma

The monkey that will always cling on the back of President Museveni’s regime is corruption.

Apart from naked bribes and the direct stealing of taxpayer’s money, there is the greyish but gross abuse of office for personal financial gain that looks ‘legal’ to a casual observer.

In functioning democracies, many ‘legal’ and ‘constitutional’ actions by politicians in Uganda would be constantly challenged in the courts, with some found to be (legally) defective. The perpetrators would be punished.

In decent societies, rulers respect the institutions that enforce a measure of integrity, because social order and the stability of the State depend on it.

In the UK, a ruling party sometimes crucifies its own prime minister over misconduct.

By contrast, in Uganda, where greed and overstaying in power have led the National Resistance Movement (NRM) to construct a vampire state, all calls for integrity are lip service by a regime determined to manipulate or patronise every organisation until it becomes absorbed in the vampire state.

No organisation (especially an Opposition political party) should be allowed to have enough integrity to occupy a higher moral ground than NRM.

If everybody else looks compromised, the NRM’s most glaring evil becomes ‘normal’, not a serious vote loser.

Indeed, the question becomes whether a thief gives a portion to some needy group; or to one’s political party or constituency; or invests the stolen money in the country instead of abroad; or even just throws big parties.

The vampire state sometimes lays its traps to fight the Opposition very carefully.

Look. Pinetti’s Lubowa hospital is now wrapped around the President’s neck like a mess of poisoned spaghetti. Rumours persist that powerful people in the Health sector forked out piles of dirty money for serious real estate during and after the Covid-19 lockdowns.

Honchos at Parliament swagger and raise their per diem and other perks as if these privileged bigwigs must journey through legalised plunder to live like stars in Hollywood. Ex-speakers came for more cars.

Syphons are working at full capacity, feeding the plunderers of the vampire state.

Enter Mathias Mpuuga. Learned, gentle mannered, eloquent; a (now former) Leader of the Opposition in Parliament that ruling NRM leaders could talk to. He breathes integrity; a juicy target for luring into the web of the vampire state.

We are frequently reminded that Mpuuga has more political experience than many of his fellow National Unity Platform (NUP) legislators, and how he and the other NUP leaders need each other in the fight against NRM corruption and barbarism. But whatever differences some of the other NUP leaders may have had with him, given his experience, why did Mpuuga play by the NRM game plan?

How did he fail to see that hauling away Shs500 million under the cover of some (perhaps not illegal, but certainly conscience-stripped) arrangement was the kind of trap the NRM political machine had used to compromise and split the Opposition over and over again?

NRM propagandists have been defending Mpuuga even more passionately than the elitist wing of his own NUP. Why?

Can one crack and begin to dismantle the vampire state by politely repeating the same mistakes the NRM has been exploiting happily for more than 30 years?

One can ‘submit’, even if nominally of the Opposition, and enjoy one’s position. To choose to resist is to suffer.

That is the existential dilemma facing Uganda’s democracy.

The more radical wing of Mpuuga’s NUP certainly has its troublesome rough edges, but it instinctively grasps that dilemma with the intimacy of a Jonah writhing in the belly of a whale.

Mr Alan Tacca is a novelist, socio-political commentator.
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