It’s the President’s duty to call out non performers

In the Sunday Monitor of January 9, Mr Harold Acemah, a political scientist and retired diplomat, launched an unwarranted attack on President Museveni, albeit skirting his name and using the pseudonym “Sabalwanyi”. 

Why do I call the attack “unwarranted”? Because Mr Acemah makes the mistake of assuming than only he has the right to comment or “find fault” and that when the President speaks he is the offender and those he chides are saints. Not only does the President have the right to speak like all other citizens but it is his responsibility to speak out against wrongdoing or whatever is amiss.

The occasion at which Mr Acemah quotes the President as calling civil servants colonial and terming that as “a vicious, unnecessary and irresponsible attack on Ugandan civil servants which could backfire in the corridors of the public sector” was a retreat of political leaders and senior technocrats at the Office of the Prime Minister held at Kololo Ceremonial Grounds on December 24, last year.

Uganda is saddled with a problem of corruption which many erroneously and exclusively attribute to NRM as if all the corruption in the world is occasioned by the NRM. Did corruption come with the advent of NRM? 

Much of the problem is domiciled in the civil service where government workers, free from political or overhead responsibility and assured that they cannot face an electoral backlash for their actions, create fiefdoms where they preside over all manner of impropriety knowing (or believing) that the political class serves “on contract” and could be out of the way the very next day. 

Besides, because all they are occupied with is “for God and my stomach” designs, they are considerably responsible for service delivery challenges we are witnessing.  Meaning, that for any misdeeds, politicians receive a fair share of their penalty. 

But who penalises civil servants whose terms are “permanent and pensionable” when they fail national development goals? Who penalises them when they sabotage policy implementation or delay projects unless contractors have parted with a share of the contract sums for their deep pockets? And, exactly, what acts is Mr Acemah defending about these “cherished, angelic” civil servants of his?

President Museveni, as head-of-state and government, is charged with managing Ugandan affairs the best way he finds fit and he deserves support, advice and information.

When he addresses one group, he is addressing everyone who needs redirection. As a politician, where he errs, it’s the collective body of Ugandans that judges him and hands him “a sentence” via elections. The fact that they have voted him over and over means that they appreciate his way of doing things or at worst, that they can still tolerate him ahead of anyone else. 

Mr Acemah is less entitled to claim to represent the voice of Ugandans by using statements such as “Ugandans believe that the answer he gave at the 1986 OAU Summit in Addis Ababa was visionary”. He has no mandate to speak for them. In any case, there are those who agree with Museveni and those who don’t, the same way some may agree with Acemah and others not.

Politicians, including Museveni, are human beings. They err, but they have a right to speak or front their ideas, language dynamics notwithstanding, because they have stepped up to diagnose society’s problems and try to find solutions to them. 

Anyone who feels offended being asked by the “chief executive” of the country to upgrade their work ethics has no business holding public office or earning tax payers’ money. 

Moreover, when the president says that his “fishmongers” seem to be pushing things very well and he is happy with the speed at which they are moving, those “fishmongers” are not working alone; they work with good civil servants who have decolonised, demafialised and depoliticised their minds. The attempt by Mr Acemah to propagate a gulf between the progressive political class and equally compliant civil service will not succeed.  As for Museveni’s pointed language which the diplomat likens to what colonial lords used on natives back then, what is more insulting than holders of public office literally capturing the state and denying citizens due service? 

Mr Faruk Kirunda  is the deputy Presidential Press Secretary.