Author: Mr Karoli Ssemogerere is an Attorney-at-Law and an Advocate.
Mum and I, living 50km apart, are yet to be counted. There are no signs of enumerators on my front porch.
The census probably missed the young children who harvest acorns from the pine trees, an alternative cost-free alternative to charcoal.
The Energy Minister’s initiative to put subsidized cooking gas on the market and the lack of information around it, requires simple registration at the Local Council and access to free hardware, a gas cylinder and a regulator to get started, and its impact on livelihoods is also missed.
My LC1 chairman is probably busy with more lucrative work, witnessing land sale agreements that have stamped an individualistic culture and Uganda’s difficult-to-manage society affairs.
Interestingly, the PR around the census informed the country enumeration was on. Leaders were counted quickly and efficiently.
In Uganda’s notoriously difficult-to-mount villages and communities, some centres should have been established with easy-to-use scanners, to capture national IDs, etc; after all, we are living in the digital age.
An official in the Ministry of Justice told me it instead became an opportunity to cash in on rushed procurements of single-use apparatus to cash in on the census opportunity. Uganda’s low wages also factored in; census enumerators were offered Shs50,000 a day, about $13, and promptly demonstrated in our Katabi Sub-county.
Around the world, the 2024 election spike continued. In Russia, Vladimir Putin swore in for a fifth term making minor changes, and appointing an economist as Defence Minister. The profile of his economic team has been on the rise after the Russians seem to have spooked US and international sanctions.
In Uganda, a section of the public is also wondering about the specific interest in UK sanctions against Speaker of Parliament Anita Among. Especially how unique is her purported conduct compared to other government officials. Needless to add was the image of the President seeking explanations publicly.
In South Africa, the ruling African National Congress is heading into a May 29 General Election that may result in power sharing. This will not be the first time the ANC is in coalition with other parties. After the 1994 historic multiracial elections, ANC entered government with the former Nationalist Party with Frederik de Klerk as second Deputy President, Inkatha Freedom Party of former Home Minister Mangosuthu Buthelezi, and other smaller parties. The ANC is expected to remain by far the largest single party, but will no longer have the prerogative to amend the constitution on its own.
The United Kingdom is officially out of a recession, economic figures confirmed. As to whether this will add some wind into the sails of the ruling conservatives, no one can tell, all predictions are that Labour will form the next UK government. If for any reason the collapse of the Scottish Nationalists in Scotland its former power base will give it a cushion of victory.
In the United States, positive economic news has not changed much of the political narrative. Facing trial for falsifying business records in New York, Former President Donald J Trump is still ahead of President Joe Biden in all major polls; and leads Biden in five of the six battleground states (Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Nevada) that Biden pushed to the Democrats in 2020.
This year will confirm the political power of the baby boomers who will have held a record 4 presidencies; some two term, Bill Clinton born in 1946, (1993-2001), George W. Bush born in 1946 (2001-2009), Barack Obama born in 1961 (2009-2017) and Donald Trump born in 1946, (2017-2021). Emboldened by the first true intergenerational transfer of wealth, the boomers have lived a lifestyle their parents could only have dreamed of; of opulence, luxury, crowded airports alongside private jets. The US stock market has grown 30 times in size in the life of this generation.
They have also bequeathed the world, a legacy of conflict, inflation, and more economic inequality than ever. Countries like Uganda at the bottom of the economic ladder have had to contend with lower purchasing power for their exports, scrapping for handouts and the political instability, scarcity mentality brings.
Mr Ssemogerere is an Attorney-At-Law and an Advocate.
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