Prime
Coffee deal stinks but key culprit will not be punished
Author: Musaazi Namiti. PHOTO/FILE
What you need to know:
- What this publication reported on May 19 suggests that due diligence was not done.
There are surprises about the termination of a contract that Uganda Vinci Coffee Limited, headed by an Italian woman named Enrica Pinetti, had secured to have exclusive rights to buy Uganda’s coffee.
The first surprise is that although President Museveni is in “complete agreement” with the parliamentary committee’s report about illegalities in the contract, which led to its termination, he wanted the contract to continue!
IN CASE YOU MISSED: Parliament terminates coffee deal
It makes you wonder when laws in Uganda should be followed. Should they be followed only when Opposition MPs Mohammed Ssegirinya and Allan Ssewanyana are accused of serious crimes? Should they be followed when Kizza Besigye wants to protest over skyrocketing prices, or should they be followed all the time — irrespective of who is involved?
The second surprise is that the parliamentary committee on trade, which cancelled the contract, is made up of mainly pro-NRM MPs. There are 19 NRM MPs on the committee out of a total of 30. Three MPs are members of the National Unity Platform (NUP), two belong to the Forum for Democratic Change (FDC), one belongs to the Democratic Party (DP) and five are independents.
Why this is surprising is that, ordinarily, MPs from the governing party would not want to be too tough on the government. It seems that they are now realising that there is real mess to clean up. The stench, if you will, is becoming unbearable.
Given what the committee has unearthed about the contract, it is baffling that Attorney General Kiryowa Kiwanuka went ahead and approved it.
A quick look at what the Constitution says he should do. The Constitution says: “The Attorney General shall be the principal legal adviser of the government. The functions of the Attorney General shall include the following: to give legal advice and legal services to the government on any subject; to draw and peruse agreements, contracts, treaties, conventions and documents by whatever name called, to which the government is a party or in respect of which the government has an interest.”
If Mr Kiwanuka perused the contract in question, he probably did so with his eyes completely shut. What this newspaper reported on May 19 suggests that due diligence was not done. It said Parliament based its decision to cancel the contract on three major reasons: the deal contravened multiple sections of the law, Uganda Vinci Coffee Limited does not have financial capacity for the project and it lacks a valid investment licence.
Will the key culprit, the Attorney General, face the law? Will Mr Museveni forget about the contract? I have my doubts. Limited space does not allow me to cite many examples, but there is one example that suggests we are not good at punishing malfeasance.
In 2017, the media reported about a registration and voting system that failed to work after Parliament bought it for Shs28b. Before the system was bought, the Uganda Communications Commission advised against the purchase because ZTE-ICT, the Chinese firm that made the system, was “facing queries in over a dozen countries”.
The Clerk to Parliament at the time insisted the system was “up and running”, although she said it could not be used in the “current Ugandan environment”. But before the system was bought everyone knew the Ugandan environment.
No one was punished — and attention turned to Shs6b (much less than Shs28b) that civil servants received as a bonus for winning a court case against Tullow Oil.
In the coffee deal debacle, orders came from above. The issuer of orders is untouchable and so are those close to him.
Mr Namiti is a journalist and former Al Jazeera digital editor in charge of the Africa desk
[email protected] @kazbuk
